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The Oral History of Take This To Your Grave – transcription under the cut

The pages that are just photographs, I haven't included. This post is already long enough.

Things that happened in 2003: Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor of California. Teen Vogue published its first issue. The world lost Johnny Cash. Johnny Depp appeared as Captain Jack Sparrow for the first time. A third Lord of the Rings movie arrived. Patrick Stump, Pete Wentz, Joe Trohman, and Andy Hurley released Take This To Your Grave.

"About 21 years ago or so, as I was applying to colleges I would ultimately never go to, Fall Out Boy began as a little pop-punk side project of what we assumed was Pete's more serious band, Arma Angelus," Patrick wrote in a May 2023 social media post.

"We were sloppy and couldn't solidify a lineup, but the three of us (Pete, Joe, and I) were having way too much fun to give up on it."

"We were really rough around the edges. As an example of how rough, one of my favorite teachers pulled me aside after hearing the recording that would eventually become Evening Out With Your Girlfriend and tactfully said, 'What do you think your best instrument is, Patrick? Drums. It's drums. Probably not singing, Patrick.'"

"We went into Smart Studios with the Sean O'Keefe... So, there we were, 3/5 of a band with a singer who'd only been singing a year, no drummer, and one out of two guitarists. But we had the opportunity to record with Sean at Butch Vig's legendary studio.

"Eight or so months later, Fueled by Ramen would give us a contract to record the remaining songs. We'd sleep on floors, eat nothing but peanut butter and jelly, live in a van for the next three years, and somehow despite that, eventually play with Elton John and Taylor Swift and Jay-Z and for President Obama and the NFC championship, and all these other wildly unpredictable things. But none of that would ever come close to happening if Andy hadn't made it to the session and Joe hadn't dragged us kicking and screaming into being a band."

Two decades after its release, Take This To Your Grave sits comfortable in the Top 10 of Rolling Stone's 50 Greatest Pop-Punk Albums, edging out landmark records from Buzzcocks, Generation X, Green Day, The Offspring, Blink-182, and The Ramones.

It even ranked higher than Through Being Cool by Saves The Day and Jersey's Best Dancers from Lifetime, two records the guys in Fall Out Boy particularly revere.

Fall Out Boy's proper full-length debut on Fueled by Ramen is a deceptively smart, sugar-sweet, raw, energetic masterpiece owing as much to the bass player's pop culture passions, the singers deep love of R&B and soul, and their shared history in the hardcore scene as any pioneering punk band. Fall Out Boy's creative and commercial heights were still ahead, but Take This To Your Grave kicked it off, a harbinger for the enduring songwriting partnership between Patrick Stump and Pete Wentz, the eclectic contributions from Joe Trohman, and the propulsive powerhouse that is Andy Hurley.

The recordings document a special moment when Fall Out Boy was big in "the scene" but a "secret" from the mainstream. The band (and some of their friends) first sat down for an Oral History (which doubled as an Oral History of their origin story) with their old friend Ryan J. Downey, then Senior Editor for Alternative Press, upon the occasion of the album's 10th anniversary. What follows is an updated, sharper, and expanded version of that story, newly re-edited in 2023. As Patrick eloquently said: "Happy 20th birthday, Take This To Your Grave, you weird brilliant lightning strike accident of a record."

– Ryan J. Downey.

A Weird, Brilliant Lightning Strike Of A Record. The Oral History Of Fall Out Boy's Take This To Your Grave.

As told by:

Patrick Stump

Pete Wentz

Joe Trohman

Andy Hurley

Bob McLynn - Crush Music

Sean O'Keefe - Producer/Mixer

John Janick - Fueled By Ramen

Tim McIlrath - Rise Against

Mani Mostofi - Racetraitor

Chris Gutierrez - Arma Angelus

Mark Rose - Spitalfield

Sean Muttaqi - Uprising Records

Rory Felton - The Militia Group

Richard Reines - Drive-Thru Records

"To Feel No More Bitterness Forever" - From Hardcore to Softcore, 1998-2000

PETE WENTZ: When I got into hardcore, it was about discovering the world beyond yourself. There was a culture of trying to be a better person. That was part of what was so alluring about hardcore and punk for me. But for whatever reason, it shifted. Maybe this was just in Chicago, but it became less about the thought process behind it and more about moshing and breakdowns. There was a close-mindedness that felt very reactive.

TIM MCILRITH: I saw First Born many years ago, which was the first time I saw Pete and met him around then. This was '90s hardcore - p.c., vegan, activist kind of hardcore music. Pete was in many of those bands doing that kind of thing, and I was at many of those shows. The hardcore scene in Chicago was pretty small, so everyone kind of knew each other. I knew Andy Hurley as the drummer in Racetraitor. I was in a band called Baxter, so Pete always called me 'Baxter.' I was just 'Baxter' to a lot of those guys.

JOE TROHMAN: I was a young hardcore kid coming to the shows. The same way we all started doing bands. You're a shitty kid who goes to punk and hardcore shows, and you see the other bands playing, and you want to make friends with those guys because you want to play in bands too. Pete and I had a bit of a connection because we're from the same area. I was the youngest dude at most shows. I would see Extinction, Racetraitor, Burn It Down, and all the bands of that era.

WENTZ: My driver's license was suspended then, so Joe drove me everywhere. We listened to either Metalcore like Shai Hulud or pop-punk stuff like Screeching Weasel.

MCILRITH: I was in a band with Pete called Arma Angelus. I was like their fifth or sixth bass player. I wasn't doing anything musically when they hit me up to play bass, so I said, 'Of course.' I liked everyone in the band. We were rehearsing, playing a few shows here and there, with an ever-revolving cast of characters. We recorded a record together at the time. I even sing on that record, believe it or not, they gave me a vocal part. Around that same time, I began meeting with [bassist] Joe [Principe] about starting what would become Rise Against.

CHRIS GUTIERREZ: Wentz played me the Arma Angelus demo in the car. He said he wanted it to be a mix of Despair, Buried Alive, and Damnation A.D. He told me Tim was leaving to start another band - which ended up being Rise Against - and asked if I wanted to play bass.

TROHMAN: Pete asked me to fill in for a tour when I was 15. Pete had to call my dad to convince him to let me go. He did it, too. It was my first tour, in a shitty cargo van, with those dudes. They hazed the shit out of me. It was the best and worst experience. Best overall, worst at the time.

GUTIERREZ: Enthusiasm was starting to wane in Arma Angelus. Our drummer was really into cock-rock. It wasn't an ironic thing. He loved L.A. Guns, Whitesnake, and Hanoi Rocks. It drove Pete nuts because the scene was about Bleeding Through and Throwdown, not cock rock. He was frustrated that things weren't panning out for the band, and of course, there's a ceiling for how big a metalcore band can get, anyway.

MANI MOSTOFI: Pete had honed this tough guy persona, which I think was a defense mechanism. He had some volatile moments in his childhood. Underneath, he was a pretty sensitive and vulnerable person. After playing in every mosh-metal band in the Midwest and listening exclusively to Earth Crisis, Damnation A.D., Chokehold, and stuff like that for a long time, I think Pete wanted to do something fresh. He had gotten into Lifetime, Saves The Day, The Get Up Kids, and bands like that. Pete was at that moment where the softer side of him needed an outlet, and didn't want to hide behind mosh-machismo. I remember him telling me he wanted to start a band that more girls could listen to.

MCILRATH: Pete was talking about starting a pop-punk band. Bands like New Found Glory and Saves The Day were successful then. The whole pop-punk sound was accessible. Pete was just one of those guys destined for bigger things than screaming for mediocre hardcore bands in Chicago. He's a smart guy, a brilliant guy. All the endeavors he had taken on, even in the microcosm of the 1990s Chicago hardcore world, he put a lot of though into it. You could tell that if he were given a bigger receptacle to put that thought into, it could become something huge. He was always talented: lyrics, imagery, that whole thing. He was ahead of the curve. We were in this hardcore band from Chicago together, but we were both talking about endeavors beyond it.

TROHMAN: The drummer for Arma Angelus was moving. Pete and I talked about doing something different. It was just Pete and me at first. There was this thuggishness happening in the Chicago hardcore scene at that time that wasn't part of our vibe. It was cool, but it wasn't our thing.

MCILRITH: One day at Arma Angelus practice, Pete asked me, 'Are you going to do that thing with Joe?' I was like, 'Yeah, I think so.' He was like, 'You should do that, dude. Don't let this band hold you back. I'll be doing something else, too. We should be doing other things.' He was really ambitious. It was so amazing to me, too, because Pete was a guy who, at the time, was kind of learning how to play the bass. A guy who didn't really play an instrument will do down in history as one of the more brilliant musicians in Chicago. He had everything else in his corner. He knew how to do everything else. He needed to get some guys behind him because he had the rest covered. He had topics, themes, lyrics, artwork, this whole image he wanted to do, and he was uncompromising. He also tapped into something the rest of us were just waking up to: the advent of the internet. I mean, the internet wasn't new, but higher-speed internet was.

MOSTOFI: Joe was excited to be invited by Pete to do a band. Joe was the youngest in our crew by far, and Pete was the 'coolest' in a Fonzie sort of way. Joe deferred to Pete's judgement for years. But eventually, his whole life centered around bossy big-brother Pete. I think doing The Damned Things was for Joe what Fall Out Boy was for Pete, in a way. It was a way to find his own space within the group of friends. Unsurprisingly, Joe now plays a much more significant role in Fall Out Boy's music.

WENTZ: I wanted to do something easy and escapist. When Joe and I started the band, it was the worst band of all time. I feel like people said, 'Oh, yeah, you started Fall Out Boy to get big.' Dude, there was way more of a chance of every other band getting big in my head than Fall Out Boy. It was a side thing that was fun to do. Racetraitor and Extinction were big bands to me. We wanted to do pop-punk because it would be fun and hilarious. It was definitely on a lark. We weren't good. If it was an attempt at selling out, it was a very poor attempt.

MCILRITH: It was such a thing for people to move from hardcore bands to bands called 'emo' or pop-punk, as those bands were starting to get some radio play and signed to major labels. Everyone thought it was easy, but it's not as easy as that. Most guys we knew who tried it never did anything more successful than their hardcore bands. But Pete did it! And if anyone was going to, it was going to be him. He never did anything half-assed. He ended up playing bass in so many bands in Chicago, even though he could barely play the bass then, because simply putting him in your band meant you'd have a better show. He was just more into it. He knew more about dynamics, about getting a crowd to react to what you're doing than most people. Putting Pete in your band put you up a few notches.

"I'm Writing You A Chorus And Here Is Your Verse" - When Pete met Patrick, early 2001.

MARK ROSE: Patrick Stump played drums in this grindcore band called Grinding Process. They had put out a live split cassette tape.

PATRICK STUMP: My ambition always outweighed my ability or actual place in the world. I was a drummer and played in many bands and tried to finagle my way into better ones but never really managed. I was usually outgunned by the same two guys: this guy Rocky Senesce; I'm not sure if he's playing anymore, but he was amazing. And this other guy, De'Mar Hamilton, who is now in Plain White T's. We'd always go out for the same bands. I felt like I was pretty good, but then those guys just mopped the floor with me. I hadn't been playing music for a few months. I think my girlfriend dumped me. I was feeling down. I wasn't really into pop-punk or emo. I think at the time I was into Rhino Records box sets.

TROHMAN: I was at the Borders in Eden's Plaza in Wilmette, Illinois. My friend Arthur was asking me about Neurosis. Patrick just walked up and started talking to me.

STUMP: I was a bit arrogant and cocky, like a lot of young musicians. Joe was talking kind of loudly and I overheard him say something about Neurosis, and I think I came in kind of snotty, kind of correcting whatever they had said.

TROHMAN: We just started talking about music, and my buddy Arthur got shoved out of the conversation. I told him about the band we were starting. Pete was this local hardcore celebrity, which intrigued Patrick.

STUMP: I had similar conversations with any number of kids my age. This conversation didn't feel crazy special. That's one of the things that's real about [Joe and I meeting], and that's honest about it, that's it's not some 'love at first sight' thing where we started talking about music and 'Holy smokes, we're going to have the best band ever!' I had been in a lot of bands up until then. Hardcore was a couple of years away from me at that point. I was over it, but Pete was in real bands; that was interesting. Now I'm curious and I want to do this thing, or at least see what happens. Joe said they needed a drummer, guitar player, or singer, and I kind of bluffed and said I could do any one of those things for a pop-punk band. I'd had a lot of conversations about starting bands where I meet up with somebody and maybe try to figure out some songs and then we'd never see each other again. There were a lot of false starts and I assumed this would be just another one of those, but it would be fun for this one to be with the guy from Racetraitor and Extinction.

TROHMAN: He gave me the link to his MP3.com page. There were a few songs of him just playing acoustic and singing. He was awesome.

WENTZ: Joe told me we were going to this kid's house who would probably be our drummer but could also sing. He sent me a link to Patrick singing some acoustic thing, but the quality was so horrible it was hard to tell what it was. Patrick answered the door in some wild outfit. He looked like an emo kid but from the Endpoint era - dorky and cool. We went into the basement, and he was like, trying to set up his drums.

TROHMAN: Patrick has said many times that he intended to try out on drums. I was pushing for him to sing after hearing his demos. 'Hey! Sing for us!' I asked him to take out his acoustic guitar. He played songs from Saves The Day's Through Being Cool. I think he sang most of the record to us. We were thrilled. We had never been around someone who could sing like that.

WENTZ: I don't think Patrick thought we were cool at all. We were hanging out, and he started playing acoustic guitar. He started singing, and I realized he could sing any Saves The Day song. I was like, 'Wow, that's the way those bands sound! We should just have you sing.' It had to be serendipity because Patrick drumming and Joe singing is not the same band. I never thought about singing. It wasn't the type of thing I could sing. I knew I'd be playing bass. I didn't think it'd even go beyond a few practices. It didn't seem like the thing I was setting myself up to do for the next several years of my life in any way. I was going to college. It was just a fun getaway from the rest of life kind of thing to do.

STUMP: Andy was the first person we asked to play drums. Joe even brought him up in the Borders conversation. But Andy was too busy. He wasn't really interested, either, because we kind of sucked.

WENTZ: I wanted Hurley in the band, I was closest to him at the time, I had known him for a long time. I identified with him in the way that we were the younger dudes in our larger group. I tried to get him, but he was doing another band at the time, or multiple bands. He was Mani's go-to guy to play drums, always. I had asked him a few times. That should clue people into the fact that we weren't that good.

ANDY HURLEY: I knew Joe as 'Number One Fan.' We called him that because he was a huge fan of a band I was in, Kill The Slavemaster. When Fall Out Boy started, I was going to college full-time. I was in the band Project Rocket and I think The Kill Pill then, too.

MOSTOFI: After they got together the first or second time, Pete played me a recording and said, 'This is going to be big.' They had no songs, no name, no drummer. They could barely play their instruments. But Pete knew, and we believed him because we could see his drive and Patrick's potential. Patrick was prodigy. I imagine the first moment Pete heard him sing was probably like when I heard 15-year-old Andy Hurley play drums.

GUTIERREZ: One day at practice, Pete told me he had met some dudes with whom he was starting a pop-punk band. He said it would sound like a cross between New Found Glory and Lifetime. Then the more Fall Out Boy started to practice, the less active Arma Angelus became.

TROHMAN: We got hooked up with a friend named Ben Rose, who became our original drummer. We would practice in his parents' basement. We eventually wrote some pretty bad songs. I don't even have the demo. I have copies of Arma's demo, but I don't have that one.

MOSTOFI: We all knew that hardcore kids write better pop-punk songs than actual pop-punk kids. It had been proven. An experienced hardcore musician could bring a sense of aggression and urgency to the pop hooks in a way that a band like Yellowcard could never achieve. Pete and I had many conversations about this. He jokingly called it 'Softcore,' but that's precisely what it was. It's what he was going for. Take This To Your Grave sounds like Hot Topic, but it feels like CBGBs.

MCILRITH: Many hardcore guys who transitioned into pop-punk bands dumbed it down musically and lyrically. Fall Out Boy found a way to do it that wasn't dumbed down. They wrote music and lyrics that, if you listened closely, you could tell came from people who grew up into hardcore. Pete seemed to approach the song titles and lyrics the same way he attacked hardcore songs. You could see his signature on all of that.

STUMP: We all had very different ideas of what it should sound like. I signed up for Kid Dynamite, Strike Anywhere, or Dillinger Four. Pete was very into Lifetime and Saves The Day. I think both he and Joe were into New Found Glory and Blink-182. I still hadn't heard a lot of stuff. I was arrogant; I was a rock snob. I was over most pop-punk. But then I had this renaissance week where I was like, 'Man, you know what? I really do like The Descendents.' Like, the specific week I met Joe, it just happened to be that I was listening to a lot of Descendents. So, there was a part of me that was tickled by that idea. 'You know what? I'll try a pop-punk band. Why not?'

MOSTOFI: To be clear, they were trying to become a big band. But they did it by elevating radio-friendly pop punk, not debasing themselves for popularity. They were closely studying Drive-Thru Records bands like The Starting Line, who I couldn't stand. But they knew what they were doing. They extracted a few good elements from those bands and combined them with their other influences. Patrick never needed to be auto-tuned. He can sing. Pete never had to contrive this emotional depth. He always had it.

STUMP: The ideas for band names were obnoxious. At some point, Pete and I were arguing over it, and I think our first drummer, Ben Rose, who was in the hardcore band Strength In Numbers, suggested Fall Out Boy. Pete and I were like, 'Well, we don't hate that one. We'll keep it on the list.' But we never voted on a name.

"Fake It Like You Matter" - The Early Shows, 2001

The name Fall Out Boy made their shortlist, but their friends ultimately chose it for them. The line-up at the band's first show was Patrick Stump (sans guitar), Pete Wentz, Joe Trohman, drummer Ben Rose, and guitarist John Flamandan in his only FOB appearance.

STUMP: We didn't have a name at our two or three shows. We were basically booked as 'Pete's new band' as he was the most known of any of us. Pete and I were the artsy two.

TROHMAN: The rest of us had no idea what we were doing onstage.

STUMP: We took ourselves very seriously and completely different ideas on what was 'cool.' Pete at the time was somewhere between maybe Chuck Palahniuk and Charles Bukowski, and kind of New Romantic and Manchester stuff, so he had that in mind. The band names he suggested were long and verbose, somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I was pretty much only into Tom Waits, so I wanted everything to be a reference to Tom Waits. The first show was at DePaul [University] in some cafeteria. The room looked a lot nicer than punk rock shows are supposed to look, like a room where you couldn't jump off the walls. We played with a band called Stillwell. I want to say one of the other bands played Black Sabbath's Black Sabbath in its entirety. We were out of place. We were tossing a few different names around. The singer for Stillwell was in earshot of the conversation so I was like 'Hey, settle this for us,' and told him whatever name it was, which I can't remember. 'What do you think of this name?' He goes, 'It sucks.' And the way he said it, there was this element to it, like, 'You guys probably suck, too, so whatever.' That was our first show. We played first and only had three songs. That was John's only show with us, and I never saw him again. I was just singing without a guitar, and I had never just sung before; that was horrifying. We blazed through those songs.

ROSE: Patrick had this shoulder-length hair. Watching these guys who were known for heavier stuff play pop-punk was strange. Pete was hopping around with the X's on his hands. Spitalfield was similar; we were kids playing another style of music who heard Texas Is The Reason and Get Up Kids and said, 'We have to start a band like this.'

MOSTOFI: The first show was a lot of fun. The musical side wasn't there, but Pete and Patrick's humor and charisma were front and center.

TROHMAN: I remember having a conversation with Mani about stage presence. He was telling me how important it was. Coalesce and The Dillinger Escape Plan would throw mic stands and cabinets. We loved that visual excitement and appeal. Years later, Patrick sang a Fall Out Boy song with Taylor Swift at Giants Stadium. It was such a great show to watch that I was reminded of how wise Mani was to give me that advice back then. Mani was like a mentor for me, honestly. He would always guide me through stuff.

MOSTOFI: Those guys grew up in Chicago, either playing in or seeing Extinction, Racetraitor, Los Crudos, and other bands that liked to talk and talk between songs. Fall Out Boy did that, and it was amazing. Patrick was awkward in a knowing and hilarious way. He'd say something odd, and then Pete would zing him. Or Pete would try to say something too cool, and Patrick would remind him they were nerds. These are very personal memories for me. Millions of people have seen the well-oiled machine, but so few of us saw those guys when they were so carefree.

TROHMAN: We had this goofy, bad first show, but all I can tell you was that I was determined to make this band work, no matter what.

STUMP: I kind of assumed that was the end of that. 'Whatever, on with our lives.' But Joe was very determined. He was going to pick us up for practice and we were going to keep playing shows. He was going to make the band happen whether the rest of us wanted to or not. That's how we got past show number one. John left the band because we only had three songs and he wasn't very interested. In the interim, I filled in on guitar. I didn't consider myself a guitar player. Our second show was a college show in Southern Illinois or something.

MCILRITH: That show was with my other band, The Killing Tree.

STUMP: We showed up late and played before The Killing Tree. There was no one there besides the bands and our friends. I think we had voted on some names. Pete said 'Hey, we're whatever!'; probably something very long. And someone yells out, 'Fuck that, no, you're Fall Out Boy!' Then when The Killing Tree was playing, Tim said, 'I want to thank Fall Out Boy.' Everyone looked up to Tim, so when he forced the name on us, it was fine. I was a diehard Simpsons fan, without question. I go pretty deep on The Simpsons. Joe and I would just rattle off Simpsons quotes. I used to do a lot of Simpsons impressions. Ben was very into Simpsons; he had a whole closet full of Simpsons action figures.

"If Only You Knew I Was Terrified" - The Early Recordings, 2002-2003

Wentz's relationships in the hardcore scene led to Fall Out Boy's first official releases. A convoluted and rarely properly explained chain of events resulted in the Fall Out Boy/Project Rocket split EP and Fall Out Boy's Evening Out with Your Girlfriend. Both were issued by California's Uprising Records, whose discography included Racetraitor's first album and the debut EP by Burn It Down. The band traveled to Wisconsin to record their first proper demo with engineer Jared Logan, drummer for Uprising's 7 Angels 7 Plagues.

TROHMAN: This isn't to be confused with the demo we did in Ben's basement, which was like a tape demo. This was our first real demo.

STUMP: Between booking the demo and recording it, we lost Ben Rose. He was the greatest guy, but it wasn't working out musically. Pete and Joe decided I should play drums on the demo. But Jared is a sick drummer, so he just did it.

TROHMAN: We had gotten this great singer but went through a series of drummers that didn't work out. I had to be the one who kicked Ben out. Not long after, our friend Brett Bunting played with us. I don't think he really wanted to do it, which was a bummer.

STUMP: I showed up to record that demo, feeling pulled into it. I liked hanging out with the guys, but I was a rock snob who didn't really want to be making that type of music. The first few songs were really rough. We were sloppy. We barely practiced. Pete was in Arma Angelus. Joe was the guy determined to make it happen. We couldn't keep a drummer or guitar player, and I could barely play guitar. I didn't really want to be in Fall Out Boy. We had these crappy songs that kind of happened; it didn't feel like anything. Joe did the guitars. I go in to do the vocals, I put on the headphones, and it starts playing and was kind of not bad! It was pretty good, actually. I was shocked. That was the first time I was like, 'Maybe I am supposed to be in this band.' I enjoyed hearing it back.

SEAN MUTTAQI: Wentz and I were pretty tight. He sent me some demos, and while I didn't know it would get as big as it did, I knew it was special. Wentz had a clear vision. Of all the guys from that scene, he was the most singularly focused on taking things to the next level. He was ahead of the game with promotion and the early days of social media.

STUMP: Arma Angelus had been on Eulogy. We talked to them a bit and spoke to Uprising because they had put out Racetraitor. At some point, the demo got to Sean, and he decided to make it half of a split with Andy's band, Project Rocket. We were pretty happy with that.

HURLEY: It was kind of competitive for me at the time. Project Rocket and Fall Out Boy were both doing pop-punk/pop-rock, I met Patrick through the band. I didn't really know him before Fall Out Boy.

TROHMAN: We got this drummer, Mike Pareskuwicz, who had been in a hardcore band from Central Illinois called Subsist.

STUMP: Uprising wanted us to make an album. We thought that was cool, but we only had those three songs that were on the split. We were still figuring ourselves out. One of the times we were recording with Jared in the studio, for the split or the album, this guy T.J. Kunasch was there. He was like, 'Hey, do you guys need a guitarist?' And he joined.

MUTTAQI: I borrowed some money to get them back in the studio. The songwriting was cool on that record, but it was all rushed. The urgency to get something out led to the recording being subpar. Their new drummer looked the part but couldn't really play. They had already tracked the drums before they realized it didn't sound so hot.

STUMP: The recording experience was not fun. We had two days to do an entire album. Mike was an awesome dude, but he lived crazy far away, in Kanakee, Illinois, so the drive to Milwaukee wasn't easy for him. He had to work or something the next day. So, he did everything in one take and left. He played alone, without a click, so it was a ness to figure out. We had to guess where the guitar was supposed to go. None of us liked the songs because we had slapped them together. We thought it all sucked. But I thought, 'Well, at least it'll be cool to have something out.' Then a lot of time went by. Smaller labels were at the mercy of money, and it was crazy expensive to put out a record back then.

MUTTAQI: Our record was being rushed out to help generate some interest, but that interest was building before we could even get the record out. We were beholden to finances while changing distribution partners and dealing with other delays. The buck stops with me, yes, but I didn't have that much control over the scheduling.

WENTZ: It's not what I would consider the first Fall Out Boy record. Hurley isn't on it and he's an integral part of the Fall Out Boy sound. But it is part of the history, the legacy. NASA didn't go right to the moon. They did test flights in the desert. Those are our test flights in the desert. It's not something I'm ashamed of or have weird feelings about.

STUMP: It's kind of embarrassing to me. Evening Out... isn't representative of the band we became. I liked Sean a lot, so it's nothing against him. If anybody wants to check out the band in that era, I think the split EP is a lot cooler. Plus, Andy is on that one.

TROHMAN: T.J. was the guy who showed up to the show without a guitar. He was the guy that could never get it right, but he was in the band for a while because we wanted a second guitar player. He's a nice dude but wasn't great to be in a band with back then. One day he drove unprompted from Racine to Chicago to pick up some gear. I don't know how he got into my parents' house, but the next thing I knew, he was in my bedroom. I didn't like being woken up and kicked him out of the band from bed.

STUMP: Our friend Brian Bennance asked us to do a split 7" with 504 Plan, which was a big band to us. Brian offered to pay for us to record with Sean O'Keefe, which was also a big deal. Mike couldn't get the time off work to record with us. We asked Andy to play on the songs. He agreed to do it, but only if he could make it in time after recording an entire EP with his band, The Kill Pill, in Chicago, on the same day.

MOSTOFI: Andy and I started The Kill Pill shortly after Racetraitor split up, not long after Fall Out Boy had formed. We played a bunch of local shows together. The minute Andy finished tracking drums for our EP in Chicago, he raced to the other studio in Madison.

STUMP: I'm getting ready to record the drums myself, getting levels and checking the drums, pretty much ready to go. And then in walks Andy Hurley. I was a little bummed because I really wanted to play drums that day. But then Andy goes through it all in like two takes and fucking nailed the entire thing. He just knocked it out of the park. All of us were like, 'That's crazy!'

WENTZ: When Andy came in, It just felt different. It was one of those 'a-ha' moments.

STUMP: Sean leaned over to us and said, 'You need to get this guy in the band.'

SEAN O'KEEFE: We had a blast. We pumped It out. We did it fast and to analog tape. People believe it was very Pro Tools oriented, but it really was done to 24-track tape. Patrick sang his ass off.

STUMP: The songs we had were 'Dead On Arrival,' 'Saturday,' and 'Homesick at Space Camp. There are quite a few songs that ended up on Take This To You Grave where I wrote most of the lyrics but Pete titled them.

WENTZ: 'Space Camp' was a reference to the 1986 movie, SpaceCamp, and the idea of space camp. Space camp wasn't something anyone in my area went to. Maybe they did, but it was never an option for me. It seems like the little kid version of meeting Jay-Z. The idea was also: what if you, like Joaquin Phoenix in the movie, took off to outer space and wanted to get home? 'I made it to space and now I'm just homesick and want to hang out with my friends.' In the greater sense, it's about having it all, but it's still not enough. There's a pop culture reference in 'Saturday' that a lot of people miss. 'Pete and I attack the lost Astoria' was a reference to The Goonies, which was filmed in Astoria, Oregon.

HURLEY: I remember hearing those recordings, especially 'Dead on Arrival,' and Patrick's voice and how well written those songs were, especially relative to anything else I had done - I had a feeling that this could do something.

WENTZ: It seemed like it would stall out if we didn't get a solid drummer in the band soon. That was the link that we couldn't nail down. Patrick was always a big musical presence. He thinks and writes rhythmi-cally, and we couldn't get a drummer to do what he wanted or speak his language. Hurley was the first one that could. It's like hearing two drummers talk together when they really get it. It sounds like a foreign language because it's not something I'm keyed into. Patrick needed someone on a similar musical plane. I wasn't there. Joe was younger and was probably headed there.

HURLEY: When Patrick was doing harmonies, it was like Queen. He's such a brilliant dude. I was always in bands that did a record and then broke up. I felt like this was a band that could tour a lot like the hardcore bands we loved, even if we had to have day jobs, too.

"(Four) Tired Boys And A Broken Down Van" - The Early Tours, 2002-2003

STUMP: We booked a tour with Spitalfield, another Chicago band, who had records out, so they were a big deal to us. We replaced T.J. with a guy named Brandon Hamm. He was never officially in the band. He quit when we were practicing 'Saturday.' He goes, 'I don't like that. I don't want to do this anymore.' Pete talked with guitarist Chris Envy from Showoff, who had just broken up. Chris said, 'Yeah, I'll play in your band.' He came to two practices, then quit like two days before the tour. It was only a two-week tour, but Mike couldn't get the time off work from Best Buy, or maybe it was Blockbuster. We had to lose Mike, which was the hardest member change for me. It was unpleasant.

TROHMAN: We had been trying to get Andy to join the band for a while. Even back at that first Borders conversation, we talked about him, but he was too busy at the time.

STUMP: I borrowed one of Joe's guitars and jumped in the fire. We were in this legendarily shitty used van Pete had gotten. It belonged to some flower shop, so it had this ominously worn-out flower decal outside and no windows [except in the front]. Crappy brakes, no A/C, missing the rearview mirror, no seats in the back, only the driver's seat. About 10 minutes into the tour, we hit something. A tire exploded and slingshot into the passenger side mirror, sending glass flying into the van. We pulled over into some weird animal petting zoo. I remember thinking, 'This is a bad omen for this tour.' Spitalfield was awesome, and we became tight with them. Drew Brown, who was later in Weekend Nachos, was out with them, too. But most of the shows were canceled.

WENTZ: We'd end up in a town, and our show was canceled, or we'd have three days off. 'Let's just get on whatever show we can. Whatever, you can pay us in pizza.'

STUMP: We played in a pizza place. We basically blocked the line of people trying to order pizza, maybe a foot away from the shitty tables. Nobody is trying to watch a band. They're just there to eat pizza. And that was perhaps the biggest show we played on that tour. One of the best moments on the Spitalfied tour was in Lincoln, Nebraska. The local opener wasn't even there - they were at the bar across the street and showed up later with two people. Fall Out Boy played for Spitalfield, and Spitalfield played for Fall Out Boy. Even the sound guy had left. It was basically an empty room. It was miserable.

HURLEY: Even though we played a ton of shows in front of just the other bands, it was awesome. I've known Pete forever and always loved being in bands with him. After that tour, it was pretty much agreed that I would be in the band. I wanted to be in the band.

WENTZ: We would play literally any show in those days for free. We played Chain Reaction in Orange County with a bunch of metalcore bands. I want to say Underoath was one of them. I remember a lot of black shirts and crossed arms at those kinds of shows. STUMP: One thing that gets lost in the annals of history is Fall Out Boy, the discarded hardcore band. We played so many hardcore shows! The audiences were cool, but they were just like, 'This is OK, but we'd really rather be moshing right now.' Which was better than many of the receptions we got from pop-punk kids.

MOSTOFI: Pete made sure there was little division between the band and the audience. In hardcore, kids are encouraged to grab the mic. Pete was very conscious about making the crowd feel like friends. I saw them in Austin, Texas, in front of maybe ten kids. But it was very clear all ten of those kids felt like Pete's best friends. And they were, in a way.

MCILRITH: People started to get into social networking. That kind of thing was all new to us, and they were way ahead. They networked with their fans before any of us.

MOSTOFI: Pete shared a lot about his life online and was intimate as hell. It was a new type of scene. Pete extended the band's community as far as fiber optics let him.

ROSE: Pete was extremely driven. Looking back, I wish I had that killer instinct. During that tour; we played a show in Colorado. On the day of the show, we went to Kinko's to make flyers to hand out to college kids. Pete put ‘members of Saves The Day and Screeching Weasel’ on the flyer. He was just like, 'This will get people in.'

WENTZ: We booked a lot of our early shows through hardcore connections, and to some extent, that carries through to what Fall Out Boy shows are like today. If you come to see us play live, we're basically Slayer compared to everyone else when we play these pop radio shows. Some of that carries back to what you must do to avoid being heckled at hardcore shows. You may not like our music, but you will leave here respecting us. Not everyone is going to love you. Not everyone is going to give a shit. But you need to earn a crowd's respect. That was an important way for us to learn that.

MOSTOFI: All those dudes, except Andy, lived in this great apartment with our friend Brett Bunting, who was almost their drummer at one point. The proximity helped them gel.

STUMP: There were a lot of renegade last-minute shows where we'd just call and get added. We somehow ended up on a show with Head Automatica that way.

MCILRITH: At some point early on, they opened for Rise Against in a church basement in Downers Grove. We were doing well then; headlining that place was a big deal. Then Pete's band was coming up right behind us, and you could tell there was a lot of chatter about Fall Out Boy. I remember getting to the show, and there were many people there, many of whom I had never seen in the scene before. A lot of unfamiliar faces. A lot of people that wouldn't have normally found their way to the seedy Fireside Bowl in Chicago. These were young kids, and I was 21 then, so when I say young, I mean really young. Clearly, Fall Out Boy had tapped into something the rest of us had not. People were super excited to see them play and freaked out; there was a lot of enthusiasm at that show. After they finished, their fans bailed. They were dedicated. They wanted to see Fall Out Boy. They didn't necessarily want to see Rise Against play. That was my first clue that, 'Whoa, what Pete told me that day at Arma Angelus rehearsal is coming true. He was right.' Whatever he was doing was working.

"My Insides Are Copper, And I'd Like To Make Them Gold" - The Record Labels Come Calling, 2002

STUMP: The split EP was going to be a three-way split with 504 Plan, August Premier, and us at one point. But then the record just never happened. Brian backed out of putting it out. We asked him if we could do something else with the three songs and he didn't really seem to care. So, we started shopping the three songs as a demo. Pete ended up framing the rejection letters we got from a lot of pop-punk labels. But some were interested.

HURLEY: We wanted to be on Drive-Thru Records so bad. That was the label.

RICHARD REINES: After we started talking to them, I found the demo they had sent us in the office. I played it for my sister. We decided everything together. She liked them but wasn't as crazy about them as I was. We arranged with Pete to see them practice. We had started a new label called Rushmore. Fall Out Boy wasn't the best live band. We weren't thrilled [by the showcase]. But the songs were great. We both had to love a band to sign them, so my sister said, 'If you love them so much, let's sign them to Rushmore, not Drive Thru.'

HURLEY: We did a showcase for Richard and Stephanie Reines. They were just kind of like, 'Yeah, we have this side label thing. We'd be interested in having you on that.' I remember them saying they passed on Saves The Day and wished they would have put out Through Being Cool. But then they [basically] passed on us by offering to put us on Rushmore. We realized we could settle for that, but we knew it wasn't the right thing.

RORY FELTON: Kevin Knight had a website, TheScout, which always featured great new bands. I believe he shared the demo with us. I flew out to Chicago. Joe and Patrick picked me up at the airport. I saw them play at a VFW hall, Patrick drank an entire bottle of hot sauce on a dare at dinner, and then we all went to see the movie The Ring. I slept on the couch in their apartment, the one featured on the cover of Take This To Your Grave. Chad [Pearson], my partner, also flew out to meet with the band.

STUMP: It was a weird time to be a band because it was feast or famine. At first, no one wanted us. Then as soon as one label said, 'Maybe we'll give 'em a shot,' suddenly there's a frenzy of phone calls from record labels. We were getting our shirts printed by Victory Records. One day, we went to pick up shirts, and someone came downstairs and said, 'Um, guys? [Owner] Tony [Brummel] wants to see you.' We were like, 'Did we forget to pay an invoice?' He made us an offer on the spot. We said, 'That's awesome, but we need to think about it.' It was one of those 'now or never' kinds of things. I think we had even left the van running. It was that kind of sudden; we were overwhelmed by it.

HURLEY: They told me Tony said something like, 'You can be with the Nike of the record industry or the Keds of the record industry.'

STUMP: We'd get random calls at the apartment. 'Hey, I'm a manager with so-and-so.' I talked to some boy band manager who said, 'We think you'll be a good fit.'

TROHMAN: The idea of a manager was a ‘big-time' thing. I answered a call one day, and this guy is like, 'I'm the manager for the Butthole Surfers, and I'd really like to work with you guys.' I just said, Yeah, I really like the Butthole Surfers, but I'll have to call you back.' And I do love that band. But I just knew that wasn't the right thing.

STUMP: Not all the archetypes you always read about are true. The label guys aren't all out to get you. Some are total douchebags. But then there are a lot who are sweet and genuine. It's the same thing with managers. I really liked the Militia Group. They told us it was poor form to talk to us without a manager. They recommended Bob McLynn.

FELTON: We knew the guys at Crush from working with Acceptance and The Beautiful Mistake. We thought they'd be great for Fall Out Boy, so we sent the music to their team.

STUMP: They said Crush was their favorite management company and gave us their number. Crush's biggest band at the time was American Hi-Fi. Jonathan Daniels, the guy who started the company, sent a manager to see us. The guy was like, "This band sucks!' But Jonathan liked us and thought someone should do something with us. Bob was his youngest rookie manager. He had never managed anyone, and we had never been managed.

BOB MCLYNN: Someone else from my office who isn't with us anymore had seen them, but I hadn't seen them yet. At the time, we'd tried to manage Brand New; they went elsewhere, and I was bummed. Then we got the Fall Out Boy demo, and I was like, Wow. This sounds even better. This guy can really sing, and these songs are great.' I remember going at it hard after that whole thing. Fall Out Boy was my consolation prize. I don't know if they were talking to other managers or not, but Pete and I clicked.

TROHMAN: In addition to being really creative, Pete is really business savvy. We all have a bullshit detector these days, but Pete already had one back then. We met Bob, and we felt like this dude wouldn't fuck us over.

STUMP: We were the misfit toy that nobody else wanted. Bob really believed in us when nobody else did and when nobody believed in him. What's funny is that all the other managers at Crush were gone within a year. It was just Bob and Jonathan, and now they're partners. Bob was the weird New York Hardcore guy who scared me at the time.

TROHMAN: We felt safe with him. He's a big, hulking dude.

MCLYNN: We tried to make a deal with The Militia Group, but they wouldn't back off on a few things in the agreement. I told them those were deal breakers, opening the door to everyone else. I knew this band needed a shot to do bigger and better things.

TROHMAN: He told us not to sign with the label that recommended him to us. We thought there was something very honest about that.

MCLYNN: They paid all their dues. Those guys worked harder than any band I'd ever seen, and I was all about it. I had been in bands before and had just gotten out. I was getting out of the van just as these guys got into one. They busted their asses.

STUMP: A few labels basically said the same thing: they wanted to hear more. They weren't convinced we could write another song as good as 'Dead On Arrival.' I took that as a challenge. We returned to Sean a few months after those initial three songs, this time at Gravity Studios in Chicago. We recorded ‘Grenade Jumper' and 'Grand Theft Autumn/Where is Your Boy' in a night or two. 'Where is Your Boy' was my, 'Fine, you don't think I can write a fucking song? Here's your hit song, jerks!' But I must have pushed Pete pretty hard [arguing about the songs]. One night, as he and I drove with Joe, Pete said, 'Guys, I don't think I want to do this band anymore.' We talked about it for the rest of the ride home. I didn't want to be in the band in the first place! I was like, 'No! That's not fair! Don't leave me with this band! Don't make me kind of like this band, and then leave it! That's bullshit!' Pete didn't stay at the apartment that night. I called him at his parent's house. I told him I wasn't going to do the band without him. He was like, 'Don't break up your band over it.' I said, 'It's not my band. It's a band that you, Joe, and I started.' He was like, 'OK, I'll stick around.' And he came back with a vengeance.

WENTZ: It was maybe the first time we realized we could do these songs titles that didn't have much do with the song from the outside. Grand Theft Auto was such a big pop culture franchise. If you said the phrase back then, everyone recognized it. The play on words was about someone stealing your time in the fall. It was the earliest experimentation with that so it was a little simplistic compared to the stuff we did later. At the time, we'd tell someone the song title, and they'd say, 'You mean "Auto"'?

JOHN JANICK: I saw their name on fliers and thought it was strange. But I remembered it. Then I saw them on a flyer with one of our bands from Chicago, August Premier. I called them and asked about this band whose name I had seen on a few flyers now. They told me they were good and I should check it out. I heard an early version of a song online and instantly fell in love with it. Drive-Thru, The Militia Group, and a few majors tried to sign them. I was the odd man out. But I knew I wanted them right away.

HURLEY: Fueled By Ramen was co-owned by Vinnie [Fiorello] from Less Than Jake. It wasn't necessarily a band I grew up loving, but I had so much respect for them and what they had done and were doing.

JANICK: I randomly cold-called them at the apartment and spoke to Patrick. He told me I had to talk to Pete. I spoke to Pete later that day. We ended up talking on the phone for an hour. It was crazy. I never flew out there. I just got to know them over the phone.

MCLYNN: There were majors [interested], but I didn't want the band on a major right away. I knew they wouldn't understand the band. Rob Stevenson from Island Records knew all the indie labels were trying to sign Fall Out Boy. We did this first-ever incubator sort of deal. I also didn't want to stay on an indie forever; I felt we needed to develop and have a chance to do bigger and better things, but these indies didn't necessarily have radio staff. It was sort of the perfect scenario. Island gave us money to go on Fueled By Ramen, with whom we did a one-off. No one else would offer a one-off on an indie.

STUMP: They were the smallest of the labels involved, with the least 'gloss.' I said, 'I don't know about this, Pete.' Pete was the one who thought it was the smartest move. He pointed out that we could be a big fish in a small pond. So, we rolled the dice.

HURLEY: It was a one-record deal with Fueled By Ramen. We didn't necessarily get signed to Island, but they had the 'right of first refusal' [for the album following Take This To Your Grave]. It was an awesome deal. It was kind of unheard of, maybe, but there was a bunch of money coming from Island that we didn't have to recoup for promo type of things.

JANICK: The company was so focused on making sure we broke Fall Out Boy; any other label probably wouldn't have had that dedication. Pete and I talked for at least an hour every day. Pete and I became so close, so much so that we started Decaydance. It was his thing, but we ended up signing Panic! At The Disco, Gym Class Heroes, Cobra Starship.

GUTIERREZ: Who could predict Pete would A&R all those bands? There's no Panic! At The Disco or Gym Class Heroes without Wentz. He made them into celebrities.

"Turn This Up And I'll Tune You Out" - The Making of Take This To You Grave, 2003

The versions of "Dead on Arrival," "Saturday," and "Homesick at Space Camp" from the first sessions with Andy on drums are what appear on the album. "Grand Theft Autumn/Where is Your Boy" and "Grenade Jumper" are the demo versions recorded later in Chicago. O'Keefe recorded the music for the rest of the songs at Smart Studios once again. They knocked out the remaining songs in just nine days. Sean and Patrick snuck into Gravity Studios in the middle of the night to track vocals in the dead of winter. Patrick sang those seven songs from two to five in the morning in those sessions.

STUMP: John Janick basically said, ‘I'll buy those five songs and we'll make them part of the album, and here's some money to go record seven more.'

MCLYNN: It was a true indie deal with Fueled by Ramen. I think we got between $15,000 and $18,000 all-in to make the album. The band slept on the studio floor some nights.

STUMP: From a recording standpoint, it was amazing. It was very pro, we had Sean, all this gear, the fun studio accoutrements were there. It was competitive with anything we did afterward. But meanwhile, we're still four broke idiots.

WENTZ: We fibbed to our parents about what we were doing. I was supposed to be in school. I didn't have access to money or a credit card. I don't think any of us did.

STUMP: I don't think we slept anywhere we could shower, which was horrifying. There was a girl that Andy's girlfriend at the time went to school with who let us sleep on her floor, but we'd be there for maybe four hours at a time. It was crazy.

HURLEY: Once, Patrick thought it would be a good idea to spray this citrus bathroom spray under his arms like deodorant. It just destroyed him because it's not made for that. But it was all an awesome adventure.

WENTZ: We were so green we didn't really know how studios worked. Every day there was soda for the band. We asked, 'Could you take that soda money and buy us peanut butter, jelly, and bread?' which they did. I hear that stuff in some ways when I listen to that album.

HURLEY: Sean pushed us. He was such a perfectionist, which was awesome. I felt like, ‘This is what a real professional band does.' It was our first real studio experience.

WENTZ: Seeing the Nirvana Nevermind plaque on the wall was mind-blowing. They showed us the mic that had been used on that album.

HURLEY: The mic that Kurt Cobain used, that was pretty awesome, crazy, legendary, and cool. But we didn't get to use it.

WENTZ: They said only Shirley Manson] from Garbage could use it.

O'KEEFE: Those dudes were all straight edge at the time. It came up in conversation that I had smoked weed once a few months before. That started this joke that I was this huge stoner, which obviously I wasn't. They'd call me 'Scoobie Snacks O'Keefe' and all these things. When they turned in the art for the record, they thanked me with like ten different stoner nicknames - 'Dimebag O'Keefe' and stuff like that. The record company made Pete take like seven of them out because they said it was excessively ridiculous.

WENTZ: Sean was very helpful. He worked within the budget and took us more seriously than anyone else other than Patrick. There were no cameras around. There was no documentation. There was nothing to indicate this would be some ‘legendary' session. There are 12 songs on the album because those were all the songs we had. There was no pomp or circumstance or anything to suggest it would be an 'important’ record.

STUMP: Pete and I were starting to carve out our niches. When Pete [re-committed himself to the band], it felt like he had a list of things in his head he wanted to do right. Lyrics were on that list. He wasn't playing around anymore. I wrote the majority of the lyrics up to that point - ‘Saturday,' 'Dead on Arrival,' ‘Where's Your Boy?,’ ‘Grenade Jumper,' and ‘Homesick at Space Camp.' I was an artsy-fartsy dude who didn't want to be in a pop-punk band, so I was going really easy on the lyrics. I wasn't taking them seriously. When I look back on it, I did write some alright stuff. But I wasn't trying. Pete doesn't fuck around like that, and he does not take that kindly. When we returned to the studio, he started picking apart every word, every syllable. He started giving me [notes]. I got so exasperated at one point I was like, ‘You just write the fucking lyrics, dude. Just give me your lyrics, and I'll write around them.' Kind of angrily. So, he did. We hadn't quite figured out how to do it, though. I would write a song, scrap my lyrics, and try to fit his into where mine had been. It was exhausting. It was a rough process. It made both of us unhappy.

MCLYNN: I came from the post-hardcore scene in New York and wasn't a big fan of the pop-punk stuff happening. What struck me with these guys was the phenomenal lyrics and Patrick's insane voice. Many guys in these kinds of bands can sing alright, but Patrick was like a real singer. This guy had soul. He'd take these great lyrics Pete wrote and combine it with that soul, and that's what made their unique sound. They both put their hearts on their sleeves when they wrote together.

STUMP: We had a massive fight over 'Chicago is So Two Years Ago.' I didn't even want to record that song. I was being precious with things that were mine. Part of me thought the band wouldn't work out, and I'd go to college and do some music alone. I had a skeletal version of 'Chicago...'. I was playing it to myself in the lobby of the studio. I didn't know anyone was listening. Sean was walking by and wanted to [introduce it to the others]. I kind of lost my song. I was very precious about it. Pete didn't like some of the lyrics, so we fought. We argued over each word, one at a time. 'Tell That Mick...' was also a pretty big fight. Pete ended up throwing out all my words on that one. That was the first song where he wrote the entire set of lyrics. My only change was light that smoke' instead of ‘cigarette' because I didn't have enough syllables to say 'cigarette.' Everything else was verbatim what he handed to me. I realized I must really want to be in this band at this point if I'm willing to put up with this much fuss. The sound was always more important to me - the rhythm of the words, alliteration, syncopation - was all very exciting. Pete didn't care about any of that. He was all meaning. He didn't care how good the words sounded if they weren't amazing when you read them. Man, did we fight about that. We fought for nine days straight while not sleeping and smelling like shit. It was one long argument, but I think some of the best moments resulted from that.

WENTZ: In 'Calm Before the Storm,' Patrick wrote the line, 'There's a song on the radio that says, 'Let's Get This Party Started' which is a direct reference to Pink's 2001 song 'Get the Party Started.' 'Tell That Mick He Just Made My List of Things to Do Today' is a line from the movie Rushmore. I thought we'd catch a little more flack for that, but even when we played it in Ireland, there was none of that. It's embraced, more like a shoutout.

STUMP: Pete and I met up on a lot of the same pop culture. He was more into '80s stuff than I was. One of the first things we talked about were Wes Anderson movies.

WENTZ: Another thing driving that song title was the knowledge that our fanbase wouldn't necessarily be familiar with Wes Anderson. It could be something that not only inspired us but something fans could also go check out. People don't ask us about that song so much now, but in that era, we'd answer and tell them to go watch Rushmore. You gotta see this movie. This line is a hilarious part of it.' Hopefully some people did. I encountered Jason Schwartzman at a party once. We didn't get to talk about the movie, but he was the sweetest human, and I was just geeking out. He told me he was writing a film with Wes Anderson about a train trip in India. I wanted to know about the writing process. He was like, 'Well, he's in New York City, I'm in LA. It's crazy because I'm on the phone all the time and my ear gets really hot.' That's the anecdote I got, and I loved it.

O'KEEFE: They're totally different people who approach making music from entirely different angles. It's cool to see them work. Pete would want a certain lyric. Patrick was focused on the phrasing. Pete would say the words were stupid and hand Patrick a revision, and Patrick would say I can't sing those the way I need to sing this. They would go through ten revisions for one song. I thought I would lose my mind with both of them, but then they would find it, and it would be fantastic. When they work together, it lights up. It takes on a life of its own. It's not always happy. There's a lot of push and pull, and each is trying to get their thing. With Take This To Your Grave, we never let anything go until all three of us were happy. Those guys were made to do this together.

WENTZ: A lot of the little things weren't a big deal, but those were things that [felt like] major decisions. I didn't want 'Where Is Your Boy' on Take This To Your Grave.

JANICK: I freaked out. I called Bob and said, 'We must put this song on the album! It's one of the biggest songs.' He agreed. We called Pete and talked about it; he was cool about it and heard us out.

WENTZ: I thought many things were humongous, and they just weren't. They didn't matter one way or another.

"Our Lawyer Made Us Change The (Album Cover)" - That Photo On Take This To Your Grave, 2003

STUMP: The band was rooted in nostalgia from early on. The '80s references were very much Pete's aesthetic. He had an idea for the cover. It ended up being his girlfriend at the time, face down on the bed, exhausted, in his bedroom. That was his bedroom in our apartment. His room was full of toys, '80s cereals. If we ended up with the Abbey Road cover of pop-punk, that original one was Sgt. Pepper's. But we couldn't legally clear any of the stuff in the photo. Darth Vader, Count Chocula…

WENTZ: There's a bunch of junk in there: a Morrissey poster, I think a Cher poster, Edward Scissorhands. We submitted it to Fueled by Ramen, and they were like, 'We can't clear any of this stuff.’ The original album cover did eventually come out on the vinyl version.

STUMP: The photo that ended up being the cover was simply a promo photo for that album cycle. We had to scramble. I was pushing the Blue Note jazz records feel. That's why the CD looks a bit like vinyl and why our names are listed on the front. I wanted a live photo on the cover. Pete liked the Blue Note idea but didn't like the live photo idea. I also made the fateful decision to have my name listed as 'Stump' rather than Stumph.

WENTZ: What we used was initially supposed to be the back cover. I remember someone in the band being pissed about it forever. Not everyone was into having our names on the cover. It was a strange thing to do at the time. But had the original cover been used, it wouldn't have been as iconic as what we ended up with. It wouldn't have been a conversation piece. That stupid futon in our house was busted in the middle. We're sitting close to each other because the futon was broken. The exposed brick wall was because it was the worst apartment ever. It makes me wonder: How many of these are accidental moments? At the time, there was nothing iconic about it. If we had a bigger budget, we probably would have ended up with a goofier cover that no one would have cared about.

STUMP: One of the things I liked about the cover was that it went along with something Pete had always said. I'm sure people will find this ironic, but Pete had always wanted to create a culture with the band where it was about all four guys and not just one guy. He had the foresight to even think about things like that. I didn't think anyone would give a fuck about our band! At the time, it was The Pete Wentz Band to most people. With that album cover, he was trying to reject that and [demonstrate] that all four of us mattered. A lot of people still don't get that, but whatever. I liked that element of the cover. It felt like a team. It felt like Voltron. It wasn't what I like to call 'the flying V photo' where the singer is squarely in the center, the most important, and everyone else is nearest the camera in order of 'importance.' The drummer would be in the very back. Maybe the DJ guy who scratches records was behind the drummer.

"You Need Him. I Could Be Him. Where Is Your Boy Tonight?" - The Dynamics of Punk Pop's Fab 4, 2003

Patrick seemed like something of the anti-frontman, never hogging the spotlight and often shrinking underneath his baseball hat. Wentz was more talkative, more out front on stage and in interviews, in a way that felt unprecedented for a bass player who wasn't also singing. In some ways, Fall Out Boy operated as a two-headed dictatorship. Wentz and Stump are in the car's front seat while Joe and Andy ride in the back.

STUMP: There is a lot of truth to that. Somebody must be in the front seat, no question. But the analogy doesn't really work for us; were more like a Swiss Army knife. You've got all these different attachments, but they are all part of the same thing. When you need one specific tool, the rest go back into the handle. That was how the band functioned and still does in many ways. Pete didn't want anyone to get screwed. Some things we've done might not have been the best business decision but were the right human decision. That was very much Pete's thing. I was 19 and very reactionary. If someone pissed me off, I'd be like, 'Screw them forever!' But Pete was very tactful. He was the business guy. Joe was active on the internet. He wouldn't stop believing in this band. He was the promotions guy. Andy was an honest instrumentalist: ‘I'm a drummer, and I'm going to be the best fucking drummer I can be.' He is very disciplined. None of us were that way aside from him. I was the dictator in the studio. I didn't know what producing was at the time or how it worked, but in retrospect, I've produced a lot of records because I'm an asshole in the studio. I'm a nice guy, but I'm not the nicest guy in the studio. It's a lot easier to know what you don't want. We carved out those roles early. We were very dependent on each other.

MCLYNN: I remember sitting in Japan with those guys. None of them were drinking then, but I was drinking plenty. It was happening there, their first time over, and all the shows were sold out. I remember looking at Pete and Patrick and telling Pete, ‘You're the luckiest guy in the world because you found this guy.' Patrick laughed. Then I turned to Patrick and said the same thing to him. Because really, they're yin and yang. They fit together so perfectly. The fact that Patrick found this guy with this vision, Pete had everything for the band laid out in his mind. Patrick, how he can sing, and what he did with Pete's lyrics - no one else could have done that. We tried it, even with the Black Cards project in 2010. We'd find these vocalists. Pete would write lyrics, and they'd try to form them into songs, but they just couldn't do it the way Patrick could. Pete has notebooks full of stuff that Patrick turns into songs. Not only can he sing like that, but how he turns those into songs is an art unto itself. It's really the combination of those two guys that make Fall Out Boy what it is. They're fortunate they found each other.

"I Could Walk This Fine Line Between Elation And Success. We All Know Which Way I'm Going To Strike The Stake Between My Chest" - Fall Out Boy Hits the Mainstream, 2003

Released on May 6, 2003, Take This To Your Grave massively connected with fans. (Fall Out Boy's Evening Out with Your Girlfriend arrived in stores less than two months earlier.) While Take This To Your Grave didn't crack the Billboard 200 upon its release, it eventually spent 30 weeks on the charts. From Under the Cork Tree debuted in the Top 10 just two years later, largely on Grave's momentum. 2007's Infinity on High bowed at #1.

WENTZ: I remember noticing it was getting insane when we would do in-stores. We'd still play anywhere. That was our deal. We liked being able to sell our stuff in the stores, too. It would turn into a riot. We played a Hollister at the mall in Schaumburg, Illinois. A lot of these stores were pretty corporate with a lot of rules, but Hollister would let us rip. Our merch guy was wearing board shorts, took this surfboard off the wall, and started crowd-surfing with it during the last song. I remember thinking things had gotten insane right at that moment.

HURLEY: When we toured with Less Than Jake, there were these samplers with two of their songs and two of ours. Giving those out was a surreal moment. To have real promotion for a record... It wasn't just an ad in a 'zine or something. It was awesome.

MCLYNN: They toured with The Reunion Show, Knockout, and Punch-line. One of their first big tours as an opening act was with MEST. There would be sold-out shows with 1,000 kids, and they would be singing along to Fall Out Boy much louder than to MEST. It was like, 'What's going on here?' It was the same deal with Less Than Jake. It really started catching fire months into the album being out. You just knew something was happening. As a headliner, they went from 500-capacity clubs to 1500 - 2000 capacity venues.

WENTZ: We always wanted to play The Metro in Chicago. It got awkward when they started asking us to play after this band or that band. There were bands we grew up with that were now smaller than us. Headlining The Metro was just wild. My parents came.

MCLYNN: There was a week on Warped Tour, and there was some beel because these guys were up-and-comers, and some of the bands that were a little more established weren't too happy. They were getting a little shit on Warped Tour that week, sort of their initiation. They were on this little, shitty stage. So many kids showed up to watch them in Detroit, and the kids rushed the stage, and it collapsed. The PA failed after like three songs. They finished with an acapella, 'Where is Your Boy,’ and the whole crowd sang along.

WENTZ: That's when every show started ending in a riot because it couldn't be contained. We ended up getting banned from a lot of venues because the entire crowd would end up onstage. It was pure energy. We'd be billed on tour as the opening band, and the promoter would tell us we had to close the show or else everyone would leave after we played. We were a good band to have that happen to because there wasn't any ego. We were just like, "Oh, that's weird.' It was just bizarre. When my parents saw it was this wid thing, they said, 'OK, yeah, maybe take a year off from college.' That year is still going on.

MCLYNN: That Warped Tour was when the band's first big magazine cover, by far, hit the stands. I give a lot of credit to Norman Wonderly and Mike Shea at Alternative Press. They saw what was happening with Fall Out Boy and were like, 'We know it's early with you guys, but we want to give you a cover.' It was the biggest thing to happen to any of us. It really helped kick it to another level. It helped stoke the fires that were burning. This is back when bands like Green Day, Blink-182, and No Doubt still sold millions of records left and right. It was a leap of faith for AP to step out on Fall Out Boy the way they did.

STUMP: That was our first big cover. It was crazy. My parents flipped out. That wasn't a small zine. It was a magazine my mom could find in a bookstore and tell her friends. It was a shocking time. It's still like that. Once the surrealism starts, it never ends. I was onstage with Taylor Swift ten years later. That statement just sounds insane. It's fucking crazy. But when I was onstage, I just fell into it. I wasn't thinking about how crazy it was until afterward. It was the same thing with the AP cover. We were so busy that it was just another one of those things we were doing that day. When we left, I was like, 'Holy fuck! We're on the cover of a magazine! One that I read! I have a subscription to that!'

HURLEY: Getting an 'In The Studio' blurb was a big deal. I remember seeing bands 'in the studio' and thinking, Man, I would love to be in that and have people care that we're in the studio.' There were more minor things, but that was our first big cover.

STUMP: One thing I remember about the photo shoot is I was asked to take off my hat. I was forced to take it off and had been wearing that hat for a while. I never wanted to be the lead singer. I always hoped to be a second guitarist with a backup singer role. I lobbied to find someone else to be the proper singer. But here I was, being the lead singer, and I fucking hated it. When I was a drummer, I was always behind something. Somehow the hat thing started. Pete gave me a hat instead of throwing it away - I think it's the one I'm wearing on the cover of Take This To Your Grave. It became like my Linus blanket. I had my hat, and I could permanently hide. You couldn't see my eyes or much of me, and I was very comfortable that way. The AP cover shoot was the first time someone asked me to remove it. My mom has a poster of that cover in her house, and every time I see it, I see the fear on my face - just trying to maintain composure while filled with terror and insecurity. ‘Why is there a camera on me?'

JANICK: We pounded the pavement every week for two years. We believed early on that something great was going to happen. As we moved to 100,000 and 200,000 albums, there were points where everything was tipping. When they were on the cover of Alternative Press. When they did Warped for five days, and the stage collapsed. We went into Christmas with the band selling 2000 to 3000 a week and in the listening stations at Hot Topic. Fueled By Ramen had never had anything like that before.

MOSTOFI: Pete and I used to joke that if he weren't straight edge, he would have likely been sent to prison or worse at some point before Fall Out Boy. Pete has a predisposition to addictive behavior and chemical dependency. This is something we talked about a lot back in the day. Straight Edge helped him avoid some of the traps of adolescence.

WENTZ: I was straight edge at the time. I don't think our band would have been so successful without that. The bands we were touring with were partying like crazy. Straight Edge helped solidify the relationship between the four of us. We were playing for the love of music, not for partying or girls or stuff like that. We liked being little maniacs running around. Hurley and I were kind of the younger brothers of the hardcore kids we were in bands with. This was an attempt to get out of that shadow a little bit. Nobody is going to compare this band to Racetraitor. You know when you don't want to do exactly what your dad or older brother does? There was a little bit of that.

"Take This To Your Grave, And I'll Take It To Mine" - The Legacy of Take This To Your Grave, 2003-2023

Take This To Your Grave represents a time before the paparazzi followed Wentz to Starbucks, before marriages and children, Disney soundtracks, and all the highs and lows of an illustrious career. The album altered the course for everyone involved with its creation. Crush Music added Miley Cyrus, Green Day, and Weezer to their roster. Fueled By Ramen signed Twenty One Pilots, Paramore, A Day To Remember, and All Time Low.

STUMP: I'm so proud of Take This To Your Grave. I had no idea how much people were going to react to it. I didn't know Fall Out Boy was that good of a band. We were this shitty post-hardcore band that decided to do a bunch of pop-punk before I went to college, and Pete went back to opening for Hatebreed. That was the plan. Somehow this record happened. To explain to people now how beautiful and accidental that record was is difficult. It seems like it had to have been planned, but no, we were that shitty band that opened for 25 Ta Life.

HURLEY: We wanted to make a record as perfect as Saves The Day's Through Being Cool. A front-to-back perfect collection of songs. That was our obsession with Take This To Your Grave. We were just trying to make a record that could be compared in any way to that record. There's just something special about when the four of us came together.

WENTZ: It blows my mind when I hear people talking about Take This To Your Grave or see people including it on lists because it was just this tiny personal thing. It was very barebones. That was all we had, and we gave everything we had to it. Maybe that's how these big iconic bands feel about those records, too. Perhaps that's how James Hetfield feels when we talk about Kill 'Em All. That album was probably the last moment many people had of having us as their band that their little brother didn't know about. I have those feelings about certain bands, too. 'This band was mine. That was the last time I could talk about them at school without anyone knowing who the fuck I was talking about.' That was the case with Take This To Your Grave.

TROHMAN: Before Save Rock N' Roll, there was a rumor that we would come back with one new song and then do a Take This To Your Grave tenth-anniversary tour. But we weren't going to do what people thought we would do. We weren't going to [wear out] our old material by just returning from the hiatus with a Take This To Your Grave tour.

WENTZ: We've been asked why we haven't done a Take This To Your Grave tour. In some ways, it's more respectful not to do that. It would feel like we were taking advantage of where that record sits, what it means to people and us.

HURLEY: When Metallica released Death Magnetic, I loved the record, but I feel like Load and Reload were better in a way, because you knew that's what they wanted to do.

TROHMAN: Some people want us to make Grave again, but I'm not 17. It would be hard to do something like that without it being contrived. Were proud of those songs. We know that’s where we came from. We know the album is an important part of our history.

STUMP: There's always going to be a Take This To Your Grave purist fan who wants that forever: But no matter what we do, we cannot give you 2003. It'll never happen again. I know the feeling, because I've lived it with my favorite bands, too. But there's a whole other chunk of our fans who have grown with us and followed this journey we're on. We were this happy accident that somehow came together. It’s tempting to plagarize yourself. But it’s way more satisfying and exciting to surprise yourself.

MCILRITH: Fall Out Boy is an important band for so many reasons. I know people don't expect the singer of Rise Against to say that, but they really are. If nothing else, they created so much dialog and conversation within not just a scene but an international scene. They were smart. They got accused of being this kiddie pop punk band, but they did smart things with their success. I say that, especially as a guy who grew up playing in the same Chicago hardcore bands that would go on and confront be-ing a part of mainstream music. Mainstream music and the mainstream world are machines that can chew your band up if you don't have your head on straight when you get into it. It's a fast-moving river, and you need to know what direction you're going in before you get into it. If you don't and you hesitate, it'll take you for a ride. Knowing those guys, they went into it with a really good idea. That's something that the hardcore instilled in all of us. Knowing where you stand on those things, we cut our teeth on the hardcore scene, and it made us ready for anything that the world could throw at us, including the giant music industry.

#long post #lke. VERY long post #fall out boy #fob #take this to your grave #tttyg #patrick stump #pete wentz #joe trohman #andy hurley #if theres any typos lmk and i'll fix em this. hust took fucking forever to transcribe.

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twobluejeans · 9 months

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HEARTBREAK ON TOUR!

charles leclerc x famous!reader

summary: in which the lavender haze has been lifted. or in which america’s it couple splits.

part 8: you’re losing me, part 7: revenge dress, series masterlist

faceclaim: madison beer

ally’s radio 📻: PART 8! taylor swift deserves jail time for creating you’re losing me. taylor swift also deserves jail time for not officially releasing it. def recommend listening to it reading the chapter! (might have to stream illegally bc mother is being stingy 🙄.)

INSTAGRAM, july 17 (midnight)

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yourinstagram and just like that, the final chapter of Midnights, is out now. this is my most personal body of work that i'm putting out into the universe, and i'm so scared yet excited to share her with u. thank u to my team, my producer jackantonoff turned dearest friend of almost 7 years (woah!!!) we spent many noons & midnights on this album and i'm forever in debt n grateful. thank u to all my other friends who i didn't mention, yk who u are. to everyone else, thank u for your persistent patience and support. it does not go unnoticed. from my heart to yours, midnights (till dawn edition), is available on all streaming platforms. i love u. thank u 💗.

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leclerccharl ain’t that the teddy bear charles won for her at the fair forever ago??!

y/nsfeverdreamhigh leclerccharl o em gee yeah..

fernandoalonso_offical Proud of you cariño

barbie 🥹🥹💗💗

landonoriss screaming crying shaking throwing up

danielricciardo gagging choking ascending to god

authur_leclerc Love you always, Proud of you always ❤️

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The song’s big question: “Do I throw out everything we built or keep it?”

BY: ALLY PUBLISHED: JULY 17, 2023

Y/n L/n’s lyrical candidness is what has always made her standout as a songwriter. Whether she was writing about young love, relationships, or breakups, her songs never flinched from trying to paint a full picture, even if it was one that was hard to look at.

It’s been a while since the super star has released a breakup song, but it was only a matter of time; since the singer split with Charles Leclerc, fans have already began anticipating the inevitable breakup album. But it turns out they didn’t have to wait long. At Midnight (July 17), L/n released a second deluxe edition of her 2022 album Midnights, which included four new songs, among them the release of “You’re Losing Me,” a song fans have deciphered as ostensibly about her split with Leclerc.

via @yourinstagram on instagram

The nearly 5-minute track is a devastating relationship ender if we’ve ever heard one, as it details the hopeless and tragic dissolution of a relationship. Though L/n doesn’t include any names or details, it’s not hard to see why fans are interpreting it as being about her and Leclerc.

When Entertainment Weekly first broke the news of their split in April, sources for both parties diplomatically described the breakup as amicable, and that “it was not dramatic.” “The relationship had just run its course,” one source told ET. However, that story was debunked as L/n herself, stated Leclerc had an affair with Australian Youtuber Lola Ransdell, in one of her Eras Tour Shows. With the release of “You’re Losing Me,” L/n seems to offer a window into her perspective of how things ended while also releasing one of the most devastating songs she’s ever written.

Its lyrics don’t waste any time getting into the tragic heart of the matter. “You say, ‘I don't understand,’ and I say, ‘I know you don’t’/ We thought a cure would come through in time, now, I fear it won’t/ Remember looking at this room, we loved it ‘cause of the light/ Now I just sit in the dark and wonder if it's time,” she sings in the first verse, painting a portrait of two people who are unaligned and have seemingly grown apart in their relationship.

The pre-chorus lays out the song’s big question: “Do I throw out everything we built or keep it?” But waiting for resolution feels like something L/n doesn’t want to do anymore: “I'm getting tired, even for a phoenix/ Always rising from the ashes/ Mending all her gashes/ You might just have dealt the final blow,” she sings.

The most heart-wrenching part of the song comes in on the chorus, as she warns her other half, “Stop, you're losing me/ Stop, you’re losing me/ Stop, you’re losing me I can't find a pulse/ My heart won't start anymore/ For you/ ‘Cause you're losing me.” The lyrics mirror the song’s production which sounds like a quietly pulsing heartbeat, driving the knife’s blade of the song in even deeper.

Perhaps L/n’s biggest skill on this song is being able to convey all the heartbreak and roiling emotion without actually providing any specifics into the breakup.

“You’re Losing Me” is rife with frank, confessional lyrics, but still keeps many of the exact contours of the split obscure. There are no accusations or fingers pointed at who’s at fault. There are no mic drop moments or explosive gossip; The closest L/n gets to revealing any details is on the second verse, when she seems to suggest that the relationship hadn’t been OK for a while now.

“Every morning, I glared at you with storms in my eyes/ How can you say that you love someone you can't tell is dying?/ I sent you signals and bit my nails down to the quick/ My face was gray, but you wouldn't admit that we were sick,” she sings.

On the bridge, L/n reveals that she “wouldn’t marry me either,” perhaps offering the tiniest, sliver of hints into one of the other reasons why they ultimately fell apart: “And I wouldn't marry me either/ A pathological people pleaser/ Who only wanted you to see her/ And I'm fading, thinking/ Do something, babe, say something (say something)/ Lose something, babe, risk something (risk something)/ Choose something, babe, I got nothing (I got nothing)/ To believe, unless you’re choosing me.”

It’s the lack of details, the palpable restraint despite L/n’s clear heartbreak behind its lyrics, that makes “You’re Losing Me” perhaps the most devastating song in her catalog (yes, even more so than “All Too Well.”) Amid the grief and sadness of the song, there’s also a feeling of inevitability, of sorrow that nothing more could be done, of pointlessly waiting for action when you know nothing is coming.

In some regards, it’s one of L/n’s most mature breakup songs in her catalog, regardless of whoever it’s about. And if this is just a “from the vault” track, it makes one wonder what an albums-worth of these songs would sound like.

SEE MORE RELATED POSTS:

• Lola Ransdell Cancelled over resurfaced racism tweets

• Lola Ransdell loses brand deals over Y/n L/n drama

• Charles Leclerc finally breaks his silence over Y/n L/n Breakup

ally’s radio 📻:a filler chapter im sorry😞 but anyways, the related stories r a sneak peak of the next chapter🤫 if u asked me to tag u and i didn’t, pls send me a message or inbox me bc it might’ve gotten lost 😭 i try to stay up-to-date but sometimes i miss people so pls lmk!!!

taglist 🦢🪩: @incoherenciass@dakotali@405rry@topaz125@sassyheroneckgiant@hevburn@itsmytimetoodream@ivegotparticulartaste@crowdedimagines @asterianax @haydee5010@scenesofobx@christinabae@magical-spit@dessxoxsworld@myareadsbooks@honethatty12@hopefulinlove@diasnohibng@gentlemonsterjennie1@hummusxx@eugene-emt-roe@taestrwbrry @perjarma @cxcewg@chimchimjiminie16@glow-ish@allywthsr @millyswife @mrsmaybank13 @black-swan-blog27 @stargaryenx @lilsiz @ohthemisssery @leclerclvr @slytherinjimin3nthusiast @shessthunderstoms @cool-ultra-nerd @ncentic @playboykenz @canvashearts @tinyhrry @xeliaaaa @ifionlywould @gaviypedrisbride @callsignwindow @dhhdhsiavdhaj @chasing-liberosis @laneyspaulding19 @a-daydreamers-day @saikikusouswife @motorsp0rt @lifesuckslife @shessthunderstoms @drewsandsebastianswife @sainzluvrr @ietss

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juniperskye · 2 months

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Begin Again.

Sneak peek: Reader got out of a relationship about eight months ago and was sure love was meant to burn and break and end…but this particular Wednesday made her believe that maybe, just maybe, she could begin again with someone new.

Aaron Hotchner x (Fem) Reader

Angst/Fluff

Word count: 1236

***Flashbacks are indented and in italics – this story flashes from present to past a few times. ***

REQUESTS ARE OPEN - not edited - please be kind. Requests are open and feedback is welcome if it's constructive!

Warnings: My blog is 18+, minors DNI, implied age gap (kinda?), anxiety, self-consciousness, Past abusive relationship, explicit LANGUAGE, no use of y/n, mention of Jack, mention of Hotch’s previous relationship, story is guided by begin again by Taylor Swift (lyrics aren’t all directly used), mention of a love of the Beatles. I think that’s all, let me know if I missed any!

I do not consent to having my work translated or reposted to any other site. That being said I do not own the characters portrayed in this story.

You glanced at yourself in the mirror, second guessing your outfit choice. Were the heels too much? Would he comment on them, would he be okay with them? Maybe you should switch to flats, they would be a safer choice.

“Babe seriously. Do you have to wear heels?” He berated you. “These are the shoes she told us to wear. I can’t switch shoes I’m a bridesmaid and were all supposed to look uniform.” You explained. “Really? You’re going to make me look so fucking stupid. Who cares if she chose those, just tell her the didn’t fit or the clasp broke or something.” “I’m not doing that.” You said. “You’re so difficult. Just change your shoes, it’s not a big deal. I just don’t want to look like a fucking idiot because my girlfriend is towering over me.” He continued.

You could remember multiple arguments that went that way. Him yelling at you for dressing how you wanted, so you didn’t. He started picking out your clothes and you complied, because that was easier than having him tear you down.

You smoothed your hands over your clothes and made your way out the door. The drive to the Café was a short one. You parked and made your way across the street, ready to go in and get a table for the two of you, fully expecting to have beaten him there.

To your surprise, when you opened the door, there he was. Aaron stood from his seat and walked toward you. You met him halfway and he pulled you into a gentle embrace. You didn’t fail to notice how he still towered over you despite your heels,

“Hi! It’s so good to see you.” He said pulling out your chair.

“Oh, thank you! It’s good to see you too, I was really glad you called.” You smiled as Aaron returned to his seat across from you.

“Yeah, sorry that it’s a random Wednesday, but with my job it makes it so hard and with us being free today I wanted to take the chance and spend it with you.” Aaron explained.

“I am happy to be here! The day doesn’t matter.” You shot Aaron a shy smile.

“You look beautiful by the way.”

You couldn’t help but blush at Aaron’s words. He had been so kind and gentle with you since you had started seeing one another. You had only gone on a few dates, but things were really good. The two of you had agreed to take things slow, having both gotten out of relationships not too long ago and Aaron also had Jack to think about. You guys had texted and talked on the phone quite a bit. He had gone as far as to call you late one night after a particularly rough case.

The two of you were currently talking about how your respective weeks have gone. Aaron had just gotten back from a case (hence why you were on your date now) and you had just completed a pretty big project at work. In the midst of your conversation, the song playing in the café changed to I Will by the Beatles, one of your favorite songs.

“Oh my god I love this song!” You gushed, quietly humming along.

“You like the Beatles?” Aaron asked.

“I love them! I have every one of their albums on vinyl.” You blushed.

“I don’t think I have ever met a woman with the same level of Beatles obsession as my own.” Aaron smiled at you in admiration.

The two of you ate while quietly enjoying the music and one another’s company.

“For if I ever saw you, I didn’t catch your name. But it never really mattered, I will always feel the same. Love you forever and forever, love you with all my hear- “ “Jesus, can you stop fucking singing that song?” He huffed. “Babe, it’s a really good song, I wish you would just listen to the words.” “I don’t give a shit about your stupid song. I don’t get it anyway.” He shut you down.

Aaron and you continued your conversation upon finishing your meal. You were in pure bliss with how amazing things were going. Aaron was attentive and gave you his full attention. He nodded and responded when it was needed. He also held conversation so well, he gave just enough information about himself in combination with asking you about yourself.

Another thing that had you swooning over Aaron was the fact that he had thrown his head back in laughter a few times throughout your conversation. You truly couldn’t wrap your head around how lucky you had been to have met Aaron. Your ex had never found your sense of humor funny, and it was nice to be in the presence of someone who appreciated it.

“Can you not make jokes like that when we’re in front of my friends? Like seriously what the fuck was that?” He demanded. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it. It was just a joke. Your friends laughed.” You shrugged. “It wasn’t even funny. They just laughed out of pity to save you from the embarrassment of nobody understanding your stupid ass jokes.” He rolled his eyes at you as he stormed off.

Aaron checked his watch and noticed how late it was getting. He looked into your eyes and smiled, neither one of you wanting this day to end. But he needed to go pick up Jack from soccer practice.

“Can I walk you to your car?” Aaron asked.

“That would be great.” You smiled, wrapping your scarf around your neck.

As you made your way over to your car, you thought about talking to Aaron about how your ex had truly broken you, and that part of the reason you’d requested to take things so slowly is because you had to relearn how to accept love from someone. The last eight months had allowed you time to fall in love with yourself again, but loving someone else was a whole new obstacle you were working through.

Aaron’s voice pulled you out of your thoughts, he had been talking about how he wanted to introduce you to Jack, not now, but in the near future. He had come up with a nice way to do so.

“So, Jack and I always watch Elf and the Grinch around Christmas, I think it could be nice if one night you came over and watched one of them with us, you know. It gives us a few more weeks to really solidify things between us and by then we will have been seeing each other for four months. What do you say?” Aaron looked hopefully at you.

“Only if it’s the Jim Carrey Grinch movie. That new animated one is cute and all, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the live action.” You smiled back at him.

“Of course, it’s the Jim Carrey one. We take things very seriously at our house.” Aaron smirked at you.

Aaron and you shared a laugh, and then he brushed his hand over your cheek, leaned in, and kissed you gently. December couldn’t come fast enough. Things with your ex had really messed you up, and he’d left you believing that love wasn’t meant to flourish, just burn, and break and end.

But on a Wednesday, in a Café you watched it begin again.

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love-belle · 9 months

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my sunshine !!!

*ੈ✩‧₊˚ in which they're the 'it' couple and everyone's obsessed with them, rightfully so.

for when you find your forever kinda person. ˚ ༘♡ ⋆｡˚

social media au // lando norris x fem!reader

warnings - language

author's note - finally it's here!!! i really hope u like it!!! thank you so much for reading, i love you <3

edit - changed it bc the person who requested it doesn't speak hindi x

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username i think i just died and went to heaven

username SHUT UP EVERYONE

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≡;- ꒰ °instagram ꒱

liked by lewishamilton, carmenmmundt, landonorris and 799,725 others

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tagged landonorris

comments are disabled for this post

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liked by yourusername, charles_leclerc, danielricciardo and 913,816 others

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tagged yourusername

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tagged landonorris danielricciardo

7,928 comments

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≡;- ꒰ °instagram ꒱

liked by yourusername, danielricciardo, carmenmmundt and 886,688 others

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8,931 comments

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youunravelme · 7 months

Text

it's nice to have a friend

author's note: this is a little all over the place, but i saw a tiktok edit of seven by taylor swfit and then thought to myself, what if i ignore all my wips and wrote childhood friends to lovers with a hint of childhood trauma? and this was born. and if the timeline isn't perfect with reality, oh well. i'm but a human girl. also!! if you have ever experienced or currently experiencing abuse, please know that it was never your fault. you don't deserve to be treated that way.

pairing: mat barzal x reader

summary: wherever mat went, you were never too far behind or the one where you are childhood besties

warnings: cursing (as always), mentions of parental abuse and alcholism, tumultuous childhood, drinking, mentions of sex

there was a saying that floated around in your elementary, middle, and high school days, surrounding you like a warm oversized cardigan.

wherever mat went, you were never too far behind.

the saying could also be flipped, the two of you stuck to each other like glue.

mat, despite not being one for fights, had a bad habit of running his mouth whenever you were concerned. in fourth grade, he used newly learned vocabulary words to berate a girl who made fun of your beat up shoes and nearly got detention for it.

and you had a nasty habit of squaring up with anyone who looked at mat wrong, even if they towered over you.

your friendship worked well because of it.

age eight

you could remember summer days swimming in the pool with mat and liana, laughing as you and mat teamed up against his little sister until his mother scolded the two of you when she started crying.

but there was always a darkness that sat in the corners of your memories like fingerprints that had damaged an old photograph.

you didn't have to try to remember your parents' screaming and yelling at each other, just like you didn't have to try to recall the smell of alcohol on your father's breath. it didn't take any effort to remember the way your hands shook when you locked your room at night and climbed out of a second story window to go to mat's.

you could feel the splinters digging into your fingertips as you climbed the trellis up to his window. you could still feel the way your stomach dropped when you slipped and fell halfway up in the pouring rain, nearly breaking your arm in the process. you could still hear nadia come out and usher you inside moments before mat's eight year old feet came pattering down the stairs.

he didn't even give you time to explain, he just wrapped you up in a hug.

it took you that long to understand it was never raining, it was just tears.

the next week, you found yourselves at the park laying on your backs in the grass.

"what would you do if a genie gave you one wish?" mat asked out of the blue.

the summer sun kept you warm as the breeze kept sweeping in and blowing strands of hair into your face.

"get far away from here."

"would you bring me?" mat asked.

you turned your head to look at him only to find him already staring. "i wouldn't go anywhere without you." and you meant every word, spoke them with as much conviction as an eight year old could have.

mat reached out and squeezed your hand in his own.

"what would you wish for?"

he shrugged. "to be bigger."

you furrowed your brow. "why bigger?"

"so i could protect you better."

age nine

at nine, you and mat were playing cards in your room when the front door slammed. it was like you were on autopilot. of all the times that had happened, mat was never home with you. immediately, you were locking your door and shoving things in your backpack, pulling mat towards the window and climbing out as quickly as you could. the two of you ran to your bikes and biked all the way to an empty field where you collapsed in the tall grass and cried.

mat immediately brought you into his arms, hushing you and running his hand down your braids.

"what if--" he started stopped abruptly to clear his throat. "what if you stayed with me and liana and mom and dad? we could get bunk beds and a night light, if you want, and you wouldn't have to lock the door."

you just sobbed harder into his chest and shook your head.

it's not that simple, you wanted to tell him. but i wish it was.

age thirteen

you never moved in with mat, never got to get the bunk beds, but by middle school, your mom moved the two of you out of your old house. it was then that he started packing two lunches, one for you and another for himself.

things hadn't changed much since leaving your dad in that shitty house full of demons. you still spent most of your time at mat's house (your mom was working). still spent your saturdays going to his tournaments and games. you still cheered him on and let him cheat off your homework on sunday nights.

things shifted though, regardless if you wanted them to change or not. time, you found, never gave a shit about your opinion, thoughts, or desires.

because it felt like just yesterday, you were riding your bikes down the street, racing each other back home.

now, you were helping mat draft msn messages to a girl he had a crush on in your biology class. there was an uncomfortable sensation in your stomach that was comparable to the time you got food poisoning, but you couldn't place a reason for it.

you could paint the pink on his cheeks as the girl replied.

and you would've given anything to be the reason for it.

maybe it was silly, a small crush for the sheer convenience of it all. maybe it was the fact that he'd saved you so many times from the darkness that always seemed to follow you. maybe it was because he was a tether for you, pulling you back when you went too far in your head.

so when he laughed at something she said (which wasn't even really funny), you wanted to go back to the times the two of you would cloud gaze in the middle of the day just so you wouldn't have to be home.

age fifteen

you knew mat was a kind person, knew he was handsome and a good hockey player, that was never in question.

you just didn't realize other girls realized it too.

mat always walked in front of you in the hallways because he could make way through the crowds in ways you couldn't. (he grew like a weed over the summer and while you hated how you couldn't reach things when he held them above his head, you appreciated the way crowds moved out of the way for him).

you were used to him being in front, his grip light on your wrist as he tugged you behind him. you weren't used to walking behind his new girlfriend, chloe, who had the honor of walking beside him.

mat used to tell you how much it irritated him that people would take up so much space in the hallway and make it impossible to move around them.

but there you were, an awkward moving triangle of your best friend, his girlfriend, and you trailing pathetically behind.

chloe was cool. she never felt threatened by your friendship with mat, which might've hurt your feelings if you were delusional. you knew you had no chance with mat, so you'd take him in whatever form you could get him.

lately, that looked like spending time with liana in the stands at mat's tournaments. you would both do your homework before dissolving into gossip sessions while you braided her hair.

chloe even showed up for some games, smiling and cheering as he played. at one game, he scored and came up and tapped the glass in front of you, pointing at you and smiling.

they broke up two weeks later.

age sixteen

you openly cried when mat left for seattle. you were used to times when mat had hockey camps and would be gone for two weeks, a month at a time. but he would be gone indefinitely now.

and leading up to the day he was leaving, you thought it would be harder on you, considering mat hadn't shown anything but excitement. but when it came time for him to leave, he wouldn't let you go.

both of your moms had to pry you apart with promises that he would call and text as soon as he got to seattle.

and he did.

he hadn't even gotten into his new home when he was facetiming you.

you did your best to smile as he showed you around his new place, but your eyes were watering still. he was indefinitely two and a half hours away from you.

"you okay?" he asked when you stopped responding.

you gave him your best smile, but knew he wouldn't buy it. "just miss you is all."

he nodded, eyes going blank for a second before you saw water appear in them. mat wasn't as emotional as you were, and he for sure wasn't as teary eyed as he used to be when you still lived with your dad, but his eyes were watering all the same. "let's just treat it like summer camp," he said. "i'll be back before you know it, and if you need something, you can always call me."

you had no intentions of calling him with your problems, but then your dad showed up at your house screaming and beating the door and calling for your mother while she was at work. the doors were locked, he had no way in, and the police were on the way, but your hands were still shaking.

you couldn't run to his house to hug him anymore.

so you called him sobbing.

he picked up on the second ring.

he was lounging in bed, playing call of duty or something like it. "hey--" he cut himself off and paused his game, jumping out of bed. "what's wrong?"

"my dad," you sobbed.

mat was back in coquitlam in three hours, holding you tight to his chest and rocking you back and forth. you were openly weeping into his shirt, clinging to him. you weren't gonna let him go, and mat wasn't willing to give you up either.

you and your mom spent the night at the barzal's, with her taking the guest room while nadia brought a twin mattress into mat's room under the pretense that you would sleep on it.

you didn't.

everyone knew that you got into mat's queen sized bed and clung to him all night long.

just like everyone pretended that mat wouldn't have to leave in two days to go back to seattle.

just like you pretended like you wouldn't absolutely shatter on impact the second he left your sight.

age nineteen

when mat was drafted to the islanders, you stopped breathing. sure, it was dramatic, but you only moved into vancouver for school.

mat was moving across the fucking continent.

but he came back to seattle, and for a moment, the world was right again.

until he went to new york full time.

and the full weight of his absence hit you like a damn eighteen wheeler.

you'd watch him on the tv, when you used to watch him live in much smaller stands. you used to use puff paint to make t-shirts with his name on it, now they were selling his jersey in the arena he played in.

he didn't pick up the phone as much as he used to. he would respond to your texts days later until you stopped texting him altogether.

you should've seen it coming, especially when you saw him hanging out with instagram models and going out to bars. were you really expecting him to sit at home and wait for you to call him with a panic attack?

you had to get a grip.

so you did.

you threw yourself into your studies, pretending you didn't know his game schedule or stats. and when a cute boy named thomas came along and took interest, you allowed him to get to know you better.

you told him you grew up in coquitlam, that you were an only child, and your favorite school subject growing up was english.

(you never told him that your favorite color was the shade of mat's eyes, that you haven't spoken to your dad since the night your mom left him, or that every night, you fall asleep to career highlights of the best friend you haven't spoken to in months).

you learned he was a business major, something that should've been a red flag, but you were so focused on proving to yourself that you could be loved, that you overlooked it.

you went on dates, had sex, made plans for the future, met each other's families.

but he never met the barzals, despite the fact that you could drive to their house blindfolded.

no, they felt like a precious secret. the world could have number 13, they could have the calder memorial trophy winner, but you would not allow them to have the little sister whose hair you braided, the mother who brought you inside after you wrecked her trellis, the father who covered your scraped knees with bandaids and neosporin when your biological one was drunk at 2pm.

you might have lost mat to the awful curse called distance, but you would not lose his family.

you couldn't afford to lose them too.

now thomas, you lost a month after you turned twenty when you found him balls deep in your freshman roommate.

you went back to your apartment and cried, because it hurt, but mainly because you realized how alone you were. you had no one to call other than your mom or liana. but liana didn't even know about thomas, and your mom was dating a new guy now.

your thumb hovered over mat's contact for five minutes before you locked your phone and just went to bed.

age twenty-three

you were single for a whole year before you met dawson. his brown eyes and salt and pepper hair captivated you.

you were hooked, despite the seven year age gap.

he gave you the number to a good psychologist to help you work through your past and was willing to listen to you talk about it or sit in silence when your therapy session was emotionally exhausting.

he remembered your favorite flowers and brought a bouquet of them to your college graduation and kissed you in front of your mom and the barzals (minus mat, but that was a given at that point).

and on your twenty-third birthday, he proposed.

you said yes while actively trying to forget the dreams you and mat had when you were six.

you were building a fort in his bedroom with thumbtacks and blankets and sheets you'd stolen from around his house. when the project was complete, the two of you found yourselves laying in it, staring up at the blanket canopy shoddily held up by thumbtacks pushed into the wall.

"do you wanna get married?" mat had asked randomly.

"only if i get to marry you," you replied.

mat smiled a toothy grin, it was the only time you remembered him having imperfect teeth, given that he'd just lost his two front teeth. "i thought the same thing!"

and it was the most honest you had ever been. though, that wasn't a strange concept, most people were the most honest when they were either children or drunk. and considering you stayed far away from alcohol (guided by the anxiety in your stomach and the advice of your therapist), your childhood memories held the most truth.

despite not having seen him in years, you still thought of him often. you tried to see if you could remember the sound of his laugh without looking up an interview. you tried to recall the way his hair felt through your fingers.

but you couldn't.

it was crazy how much he meant to you as a child, how you still remembered the order in which he ate his breakfast, but you hadn't spoken to him in years.

you found yourself sobbing at the kitchen table one night as you poured over who to invite to the wedding. liana was a bridesmaid, mike and nadia had to be invited.

but what about mat?

you felt sick to your stomach at not inviting him. when you were in high school, when you'd gotten a grip on reality, you believed he'd walk you down the aisle in lieu of your piece of shit father.

but you hadn't spoken to him in so long.

though you couldn't imagine which would suck worse, not inviting him, or mat rejecting the invitation.

that was how dawson found you, sobbing over photos from your childhood that you wouldn't let him see. and when you tried to talk to him about it, he suggested talking to your therapist.

he broke off the engagement two weeks later. he said he didn't feel "the spark" anymore.

age twenty-four

you'd been out of college for two years now and all you had to show for it was debt and a stupid piece of paper. you were working in a coffee shop ten minutes from your mom's house and wishing you could've gotten out of coquitlam like mat did.

maybe this was your cursed existence, going to the grocery store wondering if you were going to ever run into your father again.

you'd just gotten off your shift at the coffee shop when you stopped by your local grocery store to pick some things up for dinner. it was supposed to be a normal day, but you turned the corner out of an aisle and damn near ran into someone.

"sorry, my bad--"

you looked up and suddenly the earth stopped in its rotation. you hadn't seen in him years but you'd know him blind.

his hands were around your elbows, keeping you upright. his touch almost burned you. it was an uncomfortable feeling, like putting on jeans you loved and realizing they don't fit anymore.

you pulled away, ducked your head, and started walking the opposite direction without another word.

but you should've known he would follow you, like a moth to a flame. or maybe that wasn't the right analogy, you were used to being the bug while mat was the light of your life.

but he followed you like there was a string attached to your wrists and he wasn't used to you pulling in an opposite direction.

he managed to catch up to you in the self care aisle right in front of the menstrual products. any other man you'd known would've shied away from standing in front of the tampons and pads as you deliberated which products to get, but mat's eyes wouldn't even leave your face.

you should've known he was going to come back eventually. you'd avoided seeing him in the offseason pretty well considering you were off doing internships and working out of town in the summer.

but now you were stuck in a dead end job with no passion for anything anymore, feeling more alone than you had ever felt before.

and because nature or god or the universe hated you, naturally, that was when mat showed back up.

when you had nothing to show for the years you didn't speak.

you could see the wheels turning in mat's head as he tried to think of something to say. it was an interesting turn of events that simultaneously sent an ache straight through your heart. when you were kids, he never hesitated to say exactly what was on his mind. now, he was deliberating.

"you wanna come over for dinner?" he asked. "mom's making tomato soup and grilled cheese."

you wished you could've denied him, it would've been smarter in the long run. mathew michael paul barzal could get you to do anything, and you hated that even after all those years, he still could.

you found yourself sitting at his old kitchen table surrounded by his family, dipping your grilled cheese into the soup like you were six years old again.

except the difference now was you were laughing with liana, sitting next to liana, instead of mat.

you'd occasionally meet his eyes from across the table, but it wasn't the same.

when you were kids, you sat next to each other at every opportunity. when you were kids, mat pretended to steal food off your plate. when you were kids, you knew everything about each other.

but you were adults now. and he was effectively a stranger you knew too much about.

after dinner, everyone scattered. you tried to leave, but mat caught up with you.

"what're you doing tomorrow?" he asked.

"working," you replied.

he nodded and looked around. "can i see you?"

you wanted so badly to say no, that you were busy, but as much as you wanted to pretend that he didn't, mat knew you better than anyone else, even if he had been absent for five years.

you ended up going for a walk in the park the next day, deciding that getting dinner wasn't worth the headache of mat getting recognized.

his hands were shoved in his pockets with a baseball cap pulled down low over his face. if you were brave enough to look over, you could still see his eyes taking glances at you.

"how's your mom?" mat asked, immediately jumping into topics you'd planned on ignoring.

you shrugged. "fine."

he nodded and scuffed his feet along the sidewalk. "how have you been?"

"fine." you sighed and pinched the bridge of your nose. you didn't mean to be cold, you meant it even less when you looked over and saw mat desperate for connection with you again.

in the end, you could never really deny him anything he wanted.

"life sucks right now," you admitted. "feel like i've wasted my life away here."

mat nodded along. "didn't you say your genie wish would be to leave?"

"i think my words were to 'get far away from here.'"

"you know," he started. "new york is far from here."

you couldn't help yourself. you looked up at him and saw the beginnings of a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. "are you being serious?"

he nodded. "as a heart attack."

could this be the moment? the moment your life suddenly comes back into color? things haven't felt right since mat left for new york, and maybe moving, being with him all the time, would fix whatever existential crisis you were currently having.

the two of you were packing up your childhood room a month later .

you were on a flight to new york city two days after that.

mat was bouncing on his toes when he picked you up from the airport, having come home a few days early to get his apartment set up.

"you have to meet tito," he said as soon as the both of you got in his car. "you'll get along just fine. my childhood best friend meeting my other best friend? things couldn't be more perfect!"

you smiled though you felt like dying inside. no wonder you two lost touch, you were too ashamed to message him and he was too busy befriending his entire hockey team.

the apartment itself was large. larger than you could've ever afforded, even in coquitlam. mat brought your bags to your room and gently placed them on the floor.

"do you need any help unpacking?" he asked.

maybe a bitter part of you wanted to say no, but you'd waited for this moment for years. you nodded and mat's face lit up like a christmas tree.

while he was putting your clothes away in the dresser, he told you about his team, about his career, and all that you missed. he tried to ask about your life, but you kept up the story that nothing much had happened to you. and for the most part, you weren't lying.

you hadn't spoken to your dad, you hadn't dated anyone seriously in the last year (you conveniently left out the failed engagement. you just got into town, and couldn't afford a plane ticket to fly back to coquitlam just to bail mat out of jail).

but mat was more than content to listen to your work stories from when you were working at the coffee shop. he asked questions along the way, and momentarily, it felt like everything was headed back to normal.

you shooed him out of the room so you could shower. it was kinda incredible how a nice apartment meant that his shower was better than any other one you'd ever had growing up. when you stepped out into the nicely updated bathroom and changed into some gym shorts and a t-shirt, you felt the full weight of your insecurities hit you all at once.

your mat lived down the road from you. he had a twin bed until he was fifteen when his mom could no longer ignore the way his ankles hung off the end. he had posters of sidney crosby hanging up on the walls of his bedroom.

but this mat had expensive bathrooms and egyptian cotton sheets. you didn't get to see it yet, but you were willing to bet he had state of the art kitchen appliances that he didn't fully understand how to use outside of making eggs.

you were fully ready to walk into the living room, where you heard mat clicking through what must've been streaming services (because he could afford all of them), and tell him moving here was a mistake. too much had changed, he didn't know you anymore.

but you walked out and saw blankets and sheets strung up, pinned to the walls with pillows on the floor.

almost on cue, mat's head popped out from the makeshift fort, a bright smile on his face. "i don't have bunk beds, but i thought this would be a nice alternative."

you could've cried. you almost did.

but you sat down on a pillow and watched a movie with him instead.

two months later

mat had introduced you to anthony the second week you lived in new york. anders and matt you met the next week. the rest of the team you met over the course of the two months you'd lived with mat so far. they were all nice, and you could see why mat was so enthusiastic about his job, his passion for the sport aside.

you met his "not-girlfriend" as tito called her the day before. ashley was nice enough, but clearly not in the same tax bracket as you, who had recently gotten a job working at an indie bookstore while you worked on grad school applications.

you pretended to be too busy to notice the ache in your chest when he held her hand, remembering chloe and the nasty sensation internally of insecurity bubble up. you weren't dumb enough to not know you were jealous, insecurity was a closer friend than mat was, you'd known her longer.

and if comparison was a sport, you'd be making more money than he was at this rate.

because if it wasn't the way ashley laughed, it was her smile, or her stomach, or the gap between her thighs.

or the fact that mat looked at her with something more than a savior complex.

you stupidly agreed to go out to a bar with him, ashley, and a few islanders that night. it was dumb, you knew that going in, but you were finally with mat again, why wouldn't you spend every free moment with him?

it turned out to be a mistake.

you were left sipping a diet coke by your lonesome while he was dancing with ashley. you knew you shouldn't have done it, it was a bad idea, but you found yourself at the bar asking for a shot of literally anything the bartender would give you.

but anthony slid into the seat next to you a beat later and fixed you with a knowing look. "where's your diet coke?" he asked.

your mouth dried up when the shot was placed in front of you. your heart was pounding and for a moment, it felt like you could've thrown up.

when you didn't respond, anthony nodded and stood up. "wanna go take a breather?" and he sounded so genuine that your eyes immediately welled up with tears as you nodded.

the two of you walked outside and stood in the cool air, letting the wind hit your wet cheeks.

you looked out onto the street while anthony texted on his phone. "do you want to go home?" he asked as soon as he slipped his cellphone back into his pocket.

you shrugged. "i don't know what i want."

that was a lie. you wanted to go back to a time where mat was just your best friend, before he was number 13 for the islanders, before he won the calder memorial trophy. you wanted your best friend, the one who raced you down the neighborhood streets on bikes, who drove three hours to see you when you had a panic attack.

you wanted a childhood that wasn't tainted with the darkness of your father's mistakes. you wanted to be able to go into a room and not immediately check if you could lock the door. you wanted to be able to fall asleep in a dark room without being deathly afraid.

mat was outside a second later, huffing and puffing like he'd just run a mile. his gaze was fixed on you almost immediately, while he ignored the way ashley hung off of him. "what's wrong?" he asked. he even went as far as to pry ashley off of his body so he could frame your face in his large hands.

in the corner of you eye, you saw anthony usher ashley back inside while you and mat had a staring contest. "what happened?"

you shook your head and tried to speak, but more tears spilled out. mat nodded and pursed his lips before grabbing your hand and walking you home.

he didn't say anything else until the front door shut behind you. you had no intentions of staying in the common area, you just wanted to curl up in bed and cry yourself to sleep out of shame and pity.

"what were you doing at the bar?" mat asked before you could go anywhere. "you still had diet coke in your glass."

your throat seized up at feeling caught, but you stood your ground.

"i didn't think you drank," he continued. "mainly because--"

"because my dad's an abusive alcholic? yeah, you don't need to tell me that, mat, i already know."

"so if you know that, why did tito see you order a shot from the bartender?"

you threw your hands up in the air and shrugged. "i don't know, mathew. why do you invite me to bars when you know i don't drink?" he didn't have an answer. "you don't get to shame me for considering having a drink when a bar is the only place i get to hang out with you during the season!"

"that's not--" but he cut himself off. "what're you talking about?"

"i hardly see you! why did i move across the continent if i have to go to a scary place just to spend time with you?"

"i--"

"i mean it's not fair, you left and now i have to pay the consequences of it--"

"i'm sorry, what?"

"you left--"

"i heard you. did you forget the part where you stopped contacting me?" you rolled your eyes to keep yourself from crying even more. "uh uh, don't do that. don't blame me without taking accountability for this friendship ending."

you blinked.

but mat wasn't done. "because i always called you back when i missed your calls. you were the one who stopped texting me."

"you were too busy!"

"i'm in the nhl! did you expect me to just be laying around my apartment all day? i have practices and meetings and games at weird times, but i always made sure to get back to you."

you said nothing, the tears welling up behind your eyes, but you kept them in. the verbal lashing from mat was enough, you didn't need to further embarrass yourself by crying too.

he kept going, yelling and waving his hands around, occasionally pacing and dragging his fingers through his unruly hair.

but you zoned out.

you could hear glass bottles rattling as your father came up the stairs. you sat on your bed, hoping to god he'd just keep walking. mat was out of town for a tournament, and you were grounded.

your dad stopped at the top of the stairs and looked at you. your heart was racing in your chest and you wanted nothing more than to text mat, but your mom had your phone. "what're you lookin' at?" he slurred.

it was only 1pm.

and your mom was still at work.

but he apparently didn't feel like bothering you because he turned into his bedroom and shut the door.

you could feel the air release from your lungs before you went back to reading your book.

but the peace never lasted long. thirty minutes later you could hear him yelling and screaming obscenities before he opened his door. you launched yourself out of bed and slammed your own door shut, quickly locking it with an efficiency you'd learned at a young age. the door handle rattled and you flinched backwards, nearly tripping over clothes on the floor.

but you weren't a stranger to this situation.

you opened the window and climbed out.

but he was ready for you this time because he was at the front door screaming at you as you rode away on your bike.

you didn't stop pedaling until you got to the park where you collapsed on the grass and cried.

something in your face must've changed, because mat stopped yelling and looked at you, really looked at you.

"hey," he said, voice much quieter than before. "where'd you go?"

you shook your head, tears falling down your face uncontrollably.

"don't do that," he said. "don't shut me out." mat took a step closer to you, but you immediately stepped backwards. he breathed your name, but something in his eyes shifted, like he could read your mind. "i'm not him," he whispered. "i'm not your dad, i'm not going to hurt you. you know me, you know i wouldn't do that."

"you left," was all you could say.

mat nodded. "i did, but i didn't leave you, okay? i would never leave you." he closed the distance between you and held your face in his hands, his thumbs wiping away the constant flow of water from the corners of your eyes.

"but--"

he shook his head. "no, you mean too much to me to leave you, okay? you're my best friend. if you had called me and needed me? i would've been there as soon as i could."

"you would've been too busy--"

he pulled back, a bit bewildered. "when have i ever been too busy for you?"

you held your tongue, knowing that it wasn't him per se.

"what is it?" he asked, his eyes searching your own. "what aren't you telling me?"

so you told him about how you hadn't talked to your dad, and even though you were thousands of miles away, you were still scared he'd find you and ruin your life even more. you told him about thomas, about how you thought he could be the thing that fixed you, but he cheated on you.

you told him about dawson, who was older and more mature. you told mat how dawson got you going to therapy which you thought was a good sign, until you realized he never actually wanted to talk about your bad days. he proposed, you said yes, and then he broke off the engagement when he saw you sobbing over invitations.

your eyes were too blurry to see the way mat's jaw clenched, but you could feel him pull his hands away.before you could even stop yourself, you stretched out for him, but he was just out of reach.

"mat, what," you weeped. "what's wrong?"

"you were engaged?" he mumbled. "you were engaged and didn't tell me?" you expected him to look mad, but the only thing reflected in those deep brown eyes was hurt.

"that's why he broke up with me, i was crying over childhood photos while trying to figure out if i should invite you even when we hadn't talked in years." you shrugged pathetically and gave mat a watery smile. "guess he thought it was too immature of me."

mat's hands were clenching and unclenching by his side, like he couldn't decide what he wanted to do with them.

"please don't hate me," you whispered. "i don't think i could handle it if you hated me." but he didn't say anything, mat just resulted to pacing the living room. "i think my dad fucked me up beyond repair." your eyes never left his profile. if he wouldn't look at you, that was fine, you'd continue to stare at him. "i think i'm too codependent and messed up for anyone to love me." mat's head snapped up at that comment.

"i mean," you continued. "i wasn't enough for my dad to get sober, i wasn't enough to not get cheated on, i wasn't enough for someone to marry me. maybe it's not them. maybe i'm the issue."

"no," he said immediately, shaking his head in the process, crossing the room until he could pull you into his chest. "no. that's not true."

"yes it is! my dad doesn't love anything more than alcohol--"

mat cut you off. "anyone would've been proud to have you as a daughter."

"thomas wanted my freshman roommate--"

"thomas was an idiot."

"dawson couldn't handle me when i wasn't happy--"

"fuck him too. he was thirty dating a college student."

"and you left and i--"

mat pulled you back far enough to look you in the face. "and if i could do it all over again, i'd take you with me." he pressed his forehead against yours. "here's what we're gonna do, we're gonna make a fort and watch the mighty ducks. and tomorrow, we're gonna find you the best therapist money can buy and set up an appointment because i don't like you talking about yourself this way." your stomach twisted at the idea of therapy, hesitant because of dawson-- "and i wanna hear as much as you're willing to tell me, okay?"

you nodded.

"now, i need to see you smile so i know we'll be alright." you gave him a watery smile right before he pressed a kiss to the top of your head. "there she is."

you held onto each other for another minute before reluctantly letting go to gather blankets and pillows.

four months later

you hadn't been able to make it to many of mat's games until tonight when they played the devils at home. you sat with sydney and grace and their kids.

earlier that night, you'd gone to your therapy session and cried your eyes out. after years of feeling like you weren't a human being worthy of love, you just started seeing value in just existing.

and mat was as supportive as ever. he gave you space after therapy sessions to process until you were ready to talk to him, if you wanted to. the two of you made plans to hang out at cafes and central park rather than at bars every weekend.

"look at your man go," grace nudged you with her elbow. "he's feeling good tonight."

"i'm sure it has everything to do with you being here," sydney commented. "i've never seen that man more in love than he is right now."

you could feel the heat crawl up your neck as you shook your head. "he's my best friend."

"a best friend who loves you so much, he's willing to keep things platonic for your sake."

almost immediately, an insecure thought popped in your head, but you stopped it in its tracks, imagining the thought on a conveyor belt, moving down the belt until it was out of sight completely.

your shoulders relaxed.

you deserved to be loved, and it if was mat, great.

if not, you'd still have him as your best friend.

a buzzer sounded through the arena and a quick glance at the ice told you all you needed to know. mat was skating into a cluster of his teammates, smiling wide before pointing up at where he knew you were sitting.

grace and sydney jostled you around a little while fans, male and female alike, screamed at the idea of the mat barzal pointing at them.

when the game ended (5-4 with the islanders win), you followed sydney and grace down to the locker rooms. you met up with the other wags and smiled when they greeted you. some chatted and passed time while others rocked babies in their arms. you however were anxiously looking through your photos on your phone, specifically the album labeled mat that you'd had since you'd first gotten an iphone. you didn't glance up until you hear the sound of doors opening.

mat was the seventh person out, not that you were counting. he wore a bright smile when he saw you standing there and immediately crossed the distance between the two of you to wrap you in a huge hug.

"how was therapy?" he asked.

you rolled your eyes but couldn't help but smile. "why do we always talk about me?"

"because i care." he lightly nudged your shoulder. "so how did it go?"

"it was good, actually," you remarked. "figured out and accepted that i deserve love."

if it was even possible, mat's smile got wider. "yeah you do."

"and maybe there are people waiting around for me to figure it out..." you trailed off before shyly meeting his gaze. and before you could stop yourself, before you ran out of courage, you stood on your tiptoes (like you've been doing since he hit his growth spurt in seventh grade) and pressed a kiss to the corner of his lips.

you lingered for a moment before pulling away and loooking up at your bewildered best friend whose mouth was wide open.

"what?" you asked. "did i read that wrong? sydney and grace said--"

"that's all i get?" he asked. "i've waited for this since i was six years old and i don't even get the real thing?"

you furrowed your brow. "what're you talking about? six years old?"

but mat was leaning in and capturing your lips with his own. "six year old mat had the biggest crush on six year old you," he said.

"and what about twenty-four year old mat?"

he kissed you again. "head over heels for you."

age twenty-six

after a less than stellar playoff run, you and mat headed back to canada for a portion of the off season, mainly to visit family.

but it was also nice to get out of new york, even if it was just for a short period.

in hindsight, you should've known something was going to happen. your mother, nadia, and liana took you to get your nails done and to grab lunch while you were out shopping. but you were so caught up in how nice it was to be back home (words you never thought you'd ever say), you paid no attention to the lack of mat time.

so when you walked into the backyard of his parents' house and saw a giant projector screen with blankets and pillows strewn about to make yet another fort, you almost cried.

mat's head popped out from the middle with a smile on his face until he saw the tears in your eyes. "why're you crying baby? this is supposed to be happy!"

"i love you" was all you could blubber out.

mat laughed to himself, taking your hands in his own. "i love you too baby." he knelt down and the tears kept coming down your face. "ever since i was a kid, i thought i'd be the one walking you down the aisle to the man you'd marry because i never thought you'd be crazy enough to fall in love with me."

you scoffed. "i'm definitely the one batting out of my league here, mathew."

"don't talk about the love of my life that way," he said before continuing on. "we've gone through a lot together, and i couldn't imagine getting through life without you by my side." mat took a deep breath. "so tell me, do you wanna get married?" mat asked.

you nodded through your weeping. "only if i get to marry you," you smiled.

#mat barzal #mat barzal x reader #mat barzal imagine #mathew barzal #mathew barzal imagine #nhl imagine #nhl imagines #nhl blurb

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evermoreal · 3 months

Text

it always leads to you ࿐

pairing: simon riley x reader

genre: dad’s best friend au, fluff, smut, a touch of angst

cw: smut - this is 18+ minors dni, age gap (ghost is in his 40s, reader is in her 20s), fem!reader, reader is implied to be shorter than ghost, unprotected sex (bad idea!!!!!), praise kink (excessive use of ‘good girl’), oral (m & f receiving), face-fucking (he’s gentle abt it), ummmm a man that is Not ghost makes unwanted sexual advances, small mention of blood (someone gets a cut on their forehead). please lmk if i missed anything !!!!!!

summary: coming home for the holidays is both a blessing and a curse — cheesy music, bittersweet nostalgia, and simon riley, your father’s best friend and the man you’ve had a stupidly big crush on for years.

author’s note: hiii!! um a Few things . firstly, i seldom write smut & when i do i never post it. i have put off posting this for so long bc i was so nervous — it was originally meant to be a christmas gift to u guys 😭😭 n e ways we Prevail. also i despite being Obsessed w him i’ve never written for ghost !!!! i want to do soo much more for him & the other cod men, so if u have any reqs/ideas, my asks are always open !!! love u guys soooooo much i hope i enjoy ! 💋💋

word count: 11k (sorry 😭)

credits: title is from tis the damn season by taylor swift, and the beauuuutifullll render/edit of ghost is by user dwisesz on twitter!

before you met him, you’d heard endless stories. for as long as you could remember, your father recounted tales of his friend ‘ghost’ from the army. every time he came back from deployment, there’d be something new — ghost’s snipe from 2,700 meters away, ghost making your dad laugh so hard beer came out of his nose, ghost making a new recruit cry simply by staring at them.

there were others, of course, too; gaz, who your father had quite the soft spot for; john, who quickly became your favourite when you met him a few years ago and he snuck you a sip of wine at dinner; soap, who was new to the team but had enough passion to carry an entire army on his back.

ghost, though — he was your dad’s favourite. though he claimed to be too honourable for favourites, the way your father spoke about him made it clear. a simultaneous respect and affection woven through every recounted story.

it was a shock you didn’t meet him until your freshman year of college. your father and ghost’s leave fell around the same time, and your father had invited him to stay with your family. your father never revealed much about ghost’s history, but you knew it was dark and splattered with blood. he was alone now, and though he claimed he preferred it that way, he’d accepted your father’s invitation.

from your bedroom, you’d heard the front door creak open, and without so much as a breath you were bounding down the stairs, bare feet smacking against the hardwood. your father was in the midst of putting down his bags when you threw your arms around him. “dad!”

he reciprocated immediately, pulling you tightly against him. “hi, honey. i missed you.”

as you pulled back, he patted your head, and you spotted a shadow along the floor. following it toward the still-open door, you found a broad, menacing figure, blocking most of the sunlight. he was nearly as wide as the doorway, and the top of his head just barely made it under the threshold. over his face was hidden by a black balaclava with the faint impression of a skull along the front, faded with age and use. despite the endless stories, you were immediately intimidated, and stepped closer to your father.

your dad squeezed your arm, chuckling. “lieutenant, this is my daughter.”

looking between the two of you, simon took a slow step forward, and extended his hand. his movements were careful, like you were a wild animal he didn’t want to spook.

hesitating briefly, you slipped your hand into his. the warmth of ghost’s hand bled through the gloves he wore as he squeezed yours once. “nice to meet you, sweetheart.”

“it’s nice to meet you, um, mr ghost.” you had to crane your neck to look him in the eye.

a low, raspy chuckle rumbled from his chest, and beneath the balaclava, his eyes creased into tiny half-moons. “just simon is fine, love.”

and, really, he didn’t even give you a chance. there was no warning, no preamble. in an instant, fear ignited into something far more dangerous — attraction.

with a warm stomach, you smiled, and tried your hardest to keep it from growing too wide. “right. um. simon. yes.” you bit your cheek. “i’ve heard a lot about you.”

finally releasing your hand, he murmured, “terrible things, i assume.” his wink was quick and cheeky and certainly wasn’t meant to release a swarm of butterflies in your stomach, and yet . . .

“mostly,” you joked, and beside you, your father laughed. it was a rude awakening — ice water splashed over your silly little daydream. this man was only a few years younger than your father — in no universe would he give you a chance, and in no world should you want him to.

as quickly and as unassumingly as you could, you excused yourself, claiming you were in the middle of packing — which was mostly true. you were due on campus in less than two weeks, and if you didn’t start now, you’d leave it until the night before and end up forgetting something.

initially, you’d dreaded spending two weeks under the same roof as simon. it was a surefire plan to end up embarrassing yourself, because you’d never really been able to act normally around a crush, especially one in the shape of a 6-foot-whatever behemoth. yet, as the days went on, that dread steadily began to lift. despite your school girl crush, simon was easy to talk to. a lot of the time he was quiet, but his eyes never wavered from you, listening intently and humming where it mattered. he was fun, too — he recommended good movies, took you shopping while your father ran errands, taught you the best places to hit a man if one attacked you.

(a picture of simon, dramatically curled up in pain after you’d accidentally kicked him in the balls during a lesson now sits in your phone’s ‘favourites’ folder).

two weeks went by far too quickly, and before you knew it, your dad and simon were lugging your belongings up and into your dorm. not a single bag was left for you — you were tasked with the important duty of telling them what went where. when all was said and done, simon handed you a tiny piece of paper with a ten-digit number scrawled messily across it.

“in case you ever need me,” he explained, warm brown eyes peering at you beneath terribly long lashes. “i know your dad’s always there, but — just in case.”

then, he’d patted your head and squeezed your shoulder, murmuring a, “good luck, kid.”

and, though he was lovely to look at and talk with and exist around, you knew it would never be anything more. no matter how desperately a silly little part of you wished it. he spent time with you because he didn’t have anyone else. never had a daughter or a niece to spoil or playfight with. it was endearing, the way he interacted with you. wholesome and innocent and if that was all you’d ever get, you’d be happy.

— ∘♡༉∘ —

college was a lot. it was simultaneously the best and worst time of your life, passing by at both a snail’s and bullet’s pace. somehow, you ended up halfway through your final year. the holidays had rolled around, leaving you on a train, weaving over the tracks as you made your way back home.

in the years you’d been away, you’d kept in contact with simon. he joined your family for every holiday, and beyond that, you texted him often. sent him photos of your proudest grades, spirit days, or yummy meals. he’d even occasionally text you first, asking how your classes were going, if it was raining there like it was here, if you got home safe on the nights he knew you went out.

the landlord he’d rented his shitty apartment from ended up selling the place and simon had to relocate, finding a place only a few minutes from your dad’s. they loved to bug you, now — sending selfies and videos. to occupy themselves on their offtime, they’d opened a car repair shop together, and it only got worse.

you weren’t supposed to be home until tomorrow, but you were feeling homesick and your bags were already packed. before long, you were stepping out of a taxi, bags in hand, and ambling up to the shop.

the reception area was tiny, sweetly decorated for the holidays and playing some generic christmas station. leaning against the desk was soap, slyly flirting with the blushing woman behind it.

his eyes lit up upon seeing you. “the fuck’re you doin’ ‘ere, lass?” he questioned far too loudly. immediately, you shushed him, and he caught on. “ooh, i love surprises. they’re back in the garage, workin’ away. y’want me t’film it?”

giggling, you shook your head, accepting the quick side hug he gave you. when you slipped through the garage door — opening it bit by bit, never too quickly lest it creak, soap returned to the customer.

the garage was stocked with cars in disrepair and various parts you couldn’t name if your life depended on it. the stench of motor oil, cigar smoke, and antifreeze stung your nose as you made your way over, where simon was wheeled beneath a car, thick thighs flexed inside oil-stained jeans. your father was turned away from you, bent over a shoddy metal table table and observing an array of papers. an ancient radio sat next to them, croaking out a rock song from your childhood.

“one of these days, i’m gonna teach you to use spotify,” you called, voice bouncing off the cement walls and ceiling.

a bang proceeded your words, and in the same instant, your father turned around, exclaiming your name and wrapping you in the world’s tightest bear-hug.

“we were supposed to pick you up tomorrow!” he said, voice muffled to your ears beneath the suffocating squeeze of his arms.

“figured i’d surprise you,” you supplied, stepping back from his grasp once it loosened. immediately after, you were enveloped by simon, who stunk of grease, cheap cologne, and tobacco. you inhaled; it was lovely.

“my favourite college student,” he murmured into the top of your head. “how y’been, trouble?”

when you pulled away, a dark splotch caught your eye. a small but growing patch of blood stained the top of his balaclava, turning the black fabric a murky shade of brown.

“shit! you’re bleeding!” you yelped, stepping away from him and searching your surroundings — there wasn’t much for medical supplies in a garage.

beside you, your dad was laughing; a deep, wheezy sound. “did y’hit your head?”

simon grunted, shooting you a playful glare. “if college doesn’t work out, kid, y’ve got an easy spot on the one-four-one. you’re quiet as a mouse. scared the shit outta me.”

despite yourself, you snorted. “i’ll keep that in mind. d’you guys have any bandaids?”

“there’s some in the office. bottom drawer of my desk,” your father replied, voice tinged with amusement.

“thank you, dad. simon, come. i took a first-aid course in high school.”

obediently, simon followed, keeping just a step behind as you moved through the garage. from his table, john called, “we’re going out for dinner tonight, don’t make plans!”

“sir yes sir!”

simon and your father’s office was a small room just off the garage. carpeted, with off-white walls and dusty blinds letting in yellowish rays of sunlight. dusty photos hung from the wall; a few of you and your father; the 141; a german shepherd simon adored.

moving to the desk, you bent over and dug through the mountain of junk in the bottom drawer. the box of bandaids was shoved into the corner, bent and creased. simon copied your movements, rounding the desk and sitting on the worn desk chair.

“d’you know if you have anything to clean it with? hydrogen peroxide, saline, any kind of antiseptic?” you questioned, opening the drawer above it, which contained only invoices and a chequebook.

humming, simon stood, moving to the cabinet and pulling out a bottle of whiskey. at the roll of your eyes, he chuckled. “it works, doesn’t it?”

“i suppose it does,” you replied, collecting the fast food napkins you’d spotted while searching for the bandaids. then, after he’d sat once more, you softy placed your fingers at the bottom of simon’s balaclava. “may i?”

whenever simon’s eyes met yours, your breath hitched. every single time. whether it was because of that stupid crush that never went away or because his gaze were simply so intense, like an entire world existed within small pools of deep brown. pulling you in, drowning you. it was impossible to look away.

again, he hummed, granting you permission. gently, you rolled the fabric up, revealing his face inch by inch. this wouldn’t be the first time you’d seen his face — he spent far too much time around you to hide it. he still wore it more often than not, though, and every time he bothered to tug it off, it was like seeing it for the first time. roman nose, full lips, the scar across his brow, the prickly dusting of facial hair along his jaw. it was a shame he hated photographs — you’d frame it if you had any less sanity.

in your distraction, the tension had grown thick, humming in the silence of the room. clearing your throat, you took the whiskey from him, turning it over in your hands. “this stuff is shit.”

his face twisted. “how the hell d’you know what whiskey tastes like?”

snorting, you uncapped the bottle, and began to soak the corner of a napkin. “y’know, riley, i’ve been legal for a while now.”

his lip twitched, forming a crooked smile. “i know. it’s hard not to. y’keep growing. every time i see you, you’re . . .”

he trailed off. placing a gentle hand on his forehead, you tilted his head backward, and began to gently wipe at the cut. “i’m what?”

imperceptibly, he shook his head, careful not to jostle you. “more of a woman.”

you barked a laugh at that, and his smile grew. “more of a woman? what does that mean? i had tits when i met you, simon.”

simon rolled his eyes. “that’s not — what i meant. you’re . . . not a kid. you’re meaner now, for one.”

resuming the cleaning of his wound, you pouted. “mean? you wound me. maybe i’m just not scared of you anymore.”

“no, you’re not mean. always been a sweetheart.” his eyes fluttered shut beneath your ministrations. “you were scared of me?”

you giggled, and placed the bloodied napkin in the trash. then, you dug out a bandaid. “no, not really. nervous, maybe. intimidated.”

“is my handsome face really so daunting?”

this time, your laugh was lacklustre — he’d hit the nail straight on the head. “you’re bigfoot in a skull mask. before you spoke, i was a bit nervous.”

“but you’re not? now?”

peeling the parchment from the back of the bandaid, you met his gaze. “no. why would i be?”

this time, it was simon that looked away. you delicately placed the band-aid over the cut, before he said, “thank you, angel.”

you smiled, and, like you were drunk of the proximity of him, placed a quick, daring kiss to the band-aid. “if i wasn’t such a generous nurse, i’d say you owe me. you’re lucky.”

simon breathed laugh, and if you didn’t know better, you’d think the tops of his cheeks were pink. clenching and unclenching his jaw, he murmured, “lucky indeed.”

— ∘♡༉∘ —

in hindsight, believing your high school friends were capable of growing up was one of your less intelligent ideas. call it boredom or stupidity, but when a few of your old friends invited you out to the bar, you were compelled to accept.

it, unsurprisingly, went dreadfully. the first half of the night was fine — the first round of shots was purchased by one of the sweeter ones. you caught up over murky-coloured cocktails, swapping stories about your new lives and reminiscing over your old ones. the alcohol warmed your skin and loosened your limbs. the night went on and the amount of patrons doubled; you recognized a lot of them from old classes or bus rides or kindergarten friendships.

a boy from high school, one that hadn’t said a single nice thing to you in the entire four years, approached you with something that was supposed to be a smirk. you were polite at first, nodding along to his slurred words, exhaling when he attempted a joke. he dragged a hand over your thigh, and when you shifted away he easily followed. you excused yourself, muttering something about using the restroom, and he took it as an invitation.

“y’like it public, huh? never took you as the type,” he garbled, sliding off the barstool and following your movements. “i like whatever you like, baby.”

“no, i — actually need to pee,” you stated, glancing around the bar for your lost friends. he stared at you for a long minute, eyes narrowing.

“mm, fine. i’ll — i’ll pull up my car, we can head back to my place.”

“no, i—” you began, eyeing his sleazy grin and glazed-over leer. “i don’t want to go home with you. i’m not interested. i’m sorry.”

it takes a few moments for him to wrap his head around your words; each one spelled out across his face as it’s processed. finally, his expression twisted into a sneer.

“should’ve fuckin’ known not to waste my time with you,” he barked, unfocused eyes glaring daggers at you. “once a whore always a whore, huh?”

the most embarrassing part of this was the tears. you didn’t let him see them — too prideful to let them fall before you muttered a “fuck you,” and escaped out the side door.

the night air was freezing, twinged with the sharp bite of early winter. without a jacket or alcohol — you’d sobered up as soon as his hand touched your leg — to warm you, you were left hugging yourself, digging your phone out of your purse.

you could have sobbed when a red battery symbol lights up the screen, before flickering back off, dead. you just might have had you not spotted a pay-phone a few meters away.

there were only a few coins in your purse. had it not been kept for just-in-case situations like these, there would be none at all. shoving a few into the coin slot, you dial the number you’d had memorized from childhood.

it rang several times, wind whistling in your other ear, before your father’s voice stated, “sorry, can’t reach the phone. leave a message.”

a choked sound left your throat. what the hell were you supposed to do? most of your friends had split off into tiny sub-groups, and you were too ashamed to ask any of them for a ride. there was the option of asking a bartender to call a cab, though the idea of that was, for no real reason, profusely embarrassing. then, you remembered the one other phone number you’d memorized.

you don’t really know why — there was no reason for you to remember it, especially over any other phone number. yet, when he’d handed you that crumbled sheet of paper, your eyes had traced over the shapes of the numbers, and for some reason committed them to memory with no further effort.

whatever the reason was, you didn’t feel like questioning it. you were merely thankful you did. with cold fingertips, you pressed the digits into the payphone.

he picked up on the fourth ring. “who’s this?” was the greeting.

“it’s me,” you replied, and you barely were able to finish saying your name before he was cutting you off.

”what’s wrong? are you alright?”

huffing a quiet laugh, you said, “‘m fine, simon. i just—” you sighed, clutching the phone tighter in your hand. “i went out with my friends, an’ i—i’m just not having a good time. i tried to call my dad, but it’s past ten, so he’s passed out. i’m sorry—”

“where are you?” he asked, and there was a rustling in the background.

there were only a few bars in town—he knew immediately where this one was. “i’m on my way, i’ll be there in ten. are you in a safe spot, sweetheart?”

“i’m in a telephone booth. my phone died.”

“of course it did. would you be willing to go in an’ ask the bartender to use the phone?”

“no.”

“alright. okay. just stay on the line with me then, okay? d’you have any extra change, in case y’run outta minutes?”

”yeah. i should be good. i’m—listen, si, i’m really sorry—”

“if i hear that word come outta y’r mouth again we’re gonna have issues,” he said, and you laughed despite yourself. “‘m glad you called. now i’ll get t’see your pretty face.”

a girlish giggle sounded from your chest, and if it weren’t so damn cold, you might’ve been embarrassed. “i hate bars.”

“y’go to the wrong ones,” he replied. “one day i’ll take you out to one of my favourites. show you a decent drink.”

“my drinks are decent,” you argued. there was a whooshing sound on the line, and you panicked. “you’re not driving your motorcycle, are you?”

“didn’t have anything else with me,” he said. “y’got a problem with my harley, trouble?”

“your harley is a death machine.”

simon chuckled. “i’ll drive slow with you.”

“you should be driving slow now.”

another laugh. “i’ll be there in three.”

“simon!” you admonished. “you said ten!”

“that was four minutes ago.”

shaking your head, you said, “your lack of self-preservation should be studied.”

in the few seconds he took to reply, your teeth clacked together, and simon swiftly asked, “are you chattering?”

your lack of response served as one on its own, and he continued, “doll, what’re you wearing in this telephone booth?”

“um,” you started, chewing your bottom lip. “a skirt.”

“and a jacket?”

“uh.”

“christ,” he swore. “your lack of self-preservation should be studied. it’s not even 5° out.”

“jackets are a lot of work to carry around in a bar,” you argued, though you knew it was fruitless. “and i wasn’t really planning on spending any time in a telephone booth.”

“y’should always prepare for the worst,” he stated. “what if i hadn’t picked up, hm?”

“you always pick up.”

for a short moment, the other line was quiet, with only the quiet whoosh of the wind brushing past the speakers. then, “yeah, i do.”

the way he said it — so tenderly, like an admission — had any response dying on your tongue. your heart felt oddly warm, and didn’t quite know what to do with yourself, curling and uncurling the phone cord around your fingers.

“‘m here, trouble,” simon said, saving you from further awkward silence. a headlight glared against the glass of the phone booth, hallowing fingerprints and rain stains. squeaking out an, “okay,” you hung up the phone with a click and stepped out.

he was off his motorcycle already, immediately tugging off his jacket and wrapping it around your shoulders before pulling you against him.

“god, you’re a fuckin’ ice cube, sweetheart,” he said. he held you like that for a while, arms wrapped so tightly around your frame that you worried you’d morph into him. not that you minded — he was warm.

afterwards, simon cupped your cheeks, tilting your head upward as he examined you, as if you were ill or injured. furrowing his brow, he asked, “were you crying?”

you attempted to look away, ashamed, but in his grip it proved futile. “not much.”

“what happened?” he asked, and there was something in his voice, laced in the low rumble of it, that sounded threatening. it wasn’t meant for you, that was clear — he’d never direct anything hostile toward you. before he had even the barest idea of who or what made you cry, he was already furious at it.

“it’s nothing.”

“tell me,” he demanded. then, softer, “please. i just — need to know.”

moving your gaze from a far-off shape in the night towards his, you were unable to keep it from him. “i—this guy. i went to high school with him.”

a spark lit his gaze. “what’d he do?”

for a few breaths, you were quiet, trying to sort the words into something only mildly wrath-inducing. “he wanted, um, to take me home. i didn’t want to. he got upset.”

the spark caught, lighting his gaze into a furious blaze. even beneath the balaclava, you could see his jaw clench. he stepped away from you and set on a warpath toward the bar.

“simon—no,” you yelped, hurrying to catch up with him. it was a difficult task—your shoes weren’t comfortable and his long legs moved swiftly. finally, you caught his leather sleeve in your grasp. “don’t. please, don’t.”

at the sound of your voice, soft and warbled, he stopped, turning to face you once more, and whatever he saw on your face had his eyes softening.

“i don’t want to deal with him any more than i already have,” you said, staring up at him. “i just—i just want to leave. can we go to your house, please? i don’t want to be alone. i don’t want to think.”

the neon bar lights cast strange shadows across your frames, illuminating you in various bright colours as you stood, gazes caught in one another. simon seemed to fight with himself for a moment, fury and something far more tender battling for authority. the latter won out; he exhaled a long breath, hand cupping the back of your head and pulling you into him once more.

“let’s go, yeah?”

you nodded, following with your arm wrapped around his as he led you to the bike. attached to the back was an extra helmet, which he placed atop your head, adjusting it with a heady stare you couldn’t meet. the helmet smelled like pine and tobacco and vanilla and simon — it was everywhere, and you blissfully drowned in it.

when it was to his satisfaction, he tugged his gloves off and pulled them over your fingers. they were large and loose on you, and they were still warm from his skin. afterward, he pulled his own helmet back on, and held a hand out, helping you onto the back of the machine. large hands adjusted your hips, manhandling you into the right position, and it took everything in you not to make some sort of embarrassing squeak.

“okay,” he murmured, bent over your shoulder. “i’m gonna sit on the front here. you’ll have your arms wrapped around my torso, okay? and you’re not gonna let go, at all. yeah?”

you nodded. “mmhmm.”

“i need to hear your words, love.”

meeting his gaze for the briefest second, you repeated, “i won’t let go.”

“good. i won’t too fast with you, but if y’need me to pullover, just let me know, yeah?”

another nod, and this time he gave you a pointed look. “i’ll let you know,” you stated, lips just barely twitching.

with a gloved hand, simon pat your helmet and mounted the bike. after the briefest moment of hesitation, you wrapped your arms around his middle. even through the leather, he was warm; you couldn’t help but burrow a bit further into him. with merely a glance at simon, it was obvious he was built — far more than any other man you knew. to feel it beneath you, though, was an entirely separate thing. he was solid and unyielding but not harsh; a thin layer of fat kept him just soft enough.

“good girl,” he praised, patting the hands you’d entwined in front of his belly. you pressed your eager grin between his shoulders.

the motorcycle rumbled beneath you, and, slowly, he eased the gas, weaving through the tightly-crammed parking lot. just as he was about to exit the lot, he asked, above the exhaust, “you alright?”

“mmhmm,” you hummed, cheek pressed against leather. then, “yes.”

with that, he accelerated onto the road, joining the late-night traffic. the wind whistled in your ears and bit at your exposed legs; you pressed yourself further against him, and his back vibrated with the sound he made in acknowledgment. above, yellowish streetlights warmed the pavement and passing cars. gas stations and markets and various homes passed by in a colourful blur.

at a red light, while you sat still, simon’s hand came down, brushing over your knuckles in slow circles. the movement was featherlight and you wondered if it was unconscious — as soon as it flicked back to green, he moved the hand back to the handles without any acknowledgment.

the ride to his place was closer than it would have been to yours. simon lived in a small, red brick townhouse, far enough from downtown to be quiet, and close enough to access it without any hassle. he could afford better, though he opted for this because ‘it was all he needed.’ a stove to cook on, quiet neighbours, and a bed to sleep in — these were his only requirements.

steering the motorcycle beside the curb, he parked it there, and leaned backward into you. “how was that?” he asked. the world seemed strangely quiet without the hum of the engine.

“fast,” you said lamely, honestly. “not as bad as i thought, but i still prefer cars. they have walls. and heat.”

simon laughed, shaking his head. the sound echoed through his shoulders, which you were still pressed against. “when i get you a jacket i’ll make sure it’s heated.”

the idea of simon purchasing you a leather jacket to ride with him more often — it made your face heat up and your cheeks ache with a restrained grin. you were barely able to get yourself under control before he was sliding off the bike and offering a hand to you. even with his help, maneuvering your way off with mostly-numb legs was a difficult task. you just barely were able to land steady-footed on the pavement. as if simon knew this, he kept a hand on the small of your back as you walked up the steps to his home.

inside, it smelled like simon. pine, english breakfast tea, and something unique to him. the only thing missing was the stench of a cigarette; you knew he refused to smoke inside.

the decorations were minimal yet cozy; it was surprisingly neat. besides the pair he’d just kicked off, the shoes were lined up along the wall. you’d been inside very few times, and never long enough to observe. in the living room, the lamp was still on, bathing the room in warmth. there was a cup of tea on the coffee table, only a few sips left. beside it was a novel you didn’t recognize, dog-eared halfway through.

every detail felt important, like a glimpse into him. had the bar not left you feeling sticky and unkempt, you could have stayed here observing for hours. yet, your shirt felt suffocating across your chest, and the nape of your neck felt sweaty despite the earlier chill.

“um,” you began ungracefully. “do you mind if i use your shower? i feel . . . icky.”

his lips twitched at your choice of words, and he nodded. “yeah. lemme show you the bathroom, sweets.”

following him up the stairs, he directed you to the bathroom, pulling two towels out of his linen-closet. then, he said, “shower’s fuckin’ complicated. too fancy. lemme get it started for you.”

you watched as he ducked in, fiddling with buttons and knobs until steam danced over the glass doors. afterward, he looked back at you, peering at your figure. “that’s not very comfortable.”

you followed his gaze, glancing over your outfit. “well, no.”

he huffed. “i’ll get y’something of mine,” he stated, and made his way toward the door. “i’ll leave it on my bed, yeah? just down the hall. if y’need anything, sweetheart, just shout. i’ll be downstairs.”

giving a soft smile, you nodded and said, “okay. thank you, simon. really.”

“no need. i’d let y’live here if it meant never going to that fuckin’ shitehole again.”

“it wasn’t that bad of a bar.”

he gave you a dead-pan stare. “shite. hole.”

amused, you rolled your eyes, and pushed the door shut. on the other side, you heard a chuckle — the smile that bloomed on your face at the sound was unbidden.

it’d be a lie to say it didn’t feel strange to strip in simon’s house. the fact that only a few walls stood between you sent a strange thrill through you. it was in your best interest to ignore it — your heart and body had incredibly inappropriate reactions to the man, and tonight they seemed to be at an all time high.

he was being kind, nothing else.

once your clothes were peeled off and discarded on the tiled floor, you stepped into the shower. immediately, the warmth enveloped you, melting the tension out of your muscles and washing it away.

simon didn’t have much of a selection when it came to soaps. you were thankful he had a decent face wash, though — at least there were no three-in-ones.

the body wash smelled lovely — that dizzying, woodsy scent native to simon danced alongside the steam in the bathroom as you lathered it across your skin. though it was tempting to stay for longer, you didn’t want to waste too much of his water. you stepped out, and wrapped a shockingly soft towel around your abdomen.

the house was quiet when you stepped out of the restroom, clothes collected in your hands as you padded toward simon’s bedroom. this was the one room you hadn’t yet seen, though you could have predicted quite a bit of it. neat, minimal decorations. a king-sized bed because anything smaller wouldn’t fit him. folded atop were joggers and a sweatshirt.

it wasn’t a surprise you had to roll up the pant legs until they were ridiculously cuffed at the bottom. the sight of yourself in the mirror made you snort; you were drowning in simon’s clothes. butterflies swarmed your tummy, too—you were in his clothes, like you belonged to him. the train of thought was dangerous, you quickly looked away.

exiting his bedroom, you heard a quiet, continuous popping sound. padding down the stairs, you followed it into the kitchen where simon stood, collecting a bit of butter and a salt shaker.

though your steps were quiet, simon’s eyes were on you before you even stepped inside the room. his gaze swept your figure, dwarfed in his clothes, lingering just long enough for you to catch it before he was shifting it away, jaw twitching beneath his balaclava.

after a moment too long, he said, “hey, trouble.” his voice was low. “making popcorn. there’s tea.” he gestured with his chin to the counter where two mugs sat, one of which you’d gifted to him nearly three years ago now. a black cat was painted on the front, a grumpy expression wrinkling it’s little face (“it reminds me of you,” you’d said). in a significantly less interesting mug was your tea, several shades lighter than his black.

“thank you,” you murmured against the lip of the glass, wincing slightly when a sip burned your tongue.

“do you—” he began, taking the popcorn out of the microwave and pouring it into a bowl. “how’s a movie sound?”

you grinned. “it sounds lovely.”

“there’re dvds in the cupboard out there,” he explained, sifting the butter and salt through the popcorn. “take your pick.”

a snort. “why am i not surprised you still use dvds?”

simon raised a brow. “i spend half my life in barracks. netflix is a scam, love.”

“sure,” you said, grinning impishly. “grandpa.”

despite your teasing, his movie collection was vast. a lot of them you hadn’t heard of, though you picked out a familiar one, presenting him with your choice when he joined you in the living room.

“diehard, hm?” he gave a crooked smile. “tis the season, i suppose. you have good taste, sweetheart.”

“i know,” you stated proudly. “but you should keep complimenting me.”

simon huffed a laugh, and placed the disc in the dvd player. “i already feed your ego too much.”

making yourself comfortable on his couch, you agreed, “you really do.” then, when he procured a blanket and draped it across your lap, you snorted. “this isn’t helping.”

placing the popcorn between you, simon shoved a few pieces in his mouth, and said, “sorry, sweets. can’t help it.” his smile was lopsided and boyish, charming. the tv flickered on, basking the room in a blueish glow, before simon clicked ‘play’ on the movie.

together, you watched the opening scenes of the movie. a few jokes were muttered back and forth, but, other than that and the sounds of the film, it was quiet. the popcorn was delicious, lathered in an unhealthy amount of butter and salt, you shovelled it into your mouth.

the tea, too, was lovely. warm and sweet, and, combined with the comfort of simon’s presence, you were sleepily lulling back into the plush couch. with low eyelids, you tried to make yourself comfortable, manoeuvring your body this way and that. huffing, you stared down at the couch, searching for a decent position, when you spotted simon’s lap.

all muscled and soft, he’d make the perfect pillow. would he mind? you sincerely doubted he would. it was innocent, after all. you simply wanted to relax. the only one it might be awkward for was you, and if you could get past your stupid crush for a single hour, it’d be perfect.

after one more moment of doubt, you stretched yourself out and hesitantly laid your head on simon’s lap. beneath you, he tensed for a moment, and you just about thought you’d fucked everything up before he relaxed back into the couch. a large hand made a home on your back, running soothingly up and down your spine.

laying against simon like this — it was so peaceful. your mind hushed to a low hum as you nestled further into him, eyes trained on the screen. his fingers trailed upward, tracing a pattern on the nape of your neck and returning south.

the movie was entertaining, though you felt yourself slipping into sleep. occasionally, simon’s fingers would slip over a ticklish slip of skin, and you’d shiver, causing him to exhale a chuckle.

slowly, as your mind quieted, so did the sound of the film, until it was an unintelligible mumble. the world started and ended with simon’s thighs beneath your cheek, and his hand against your shoulders.

against your eyelids, the screen was bright, lighting them up uncomfortably. huffing sleepily, you pressed your face into simon’s lap, burrowing further in an attempt to make yourself comfortable. beneath you, something firm prodded against your cheek, and at once you were very awake.

simon, suddenly, stiffened. the hand on your back halted, fingers hovering over your skin before dropping away completely. “oh, fuck—christ, sweetheart, i’m so sorry. i’ll drive you home, okay? or—i’ll call a cab, if you’d rather that—”

“simon.” the word was firm enough to catch his attention, quieting him if only for a moment. your mind swam—a mess of confusion, lust, excitement, and need. when it proved too difficult to sift through, too impossible to cohere, you voiced the one word you could manage:

“please.”

though concealed by his balaclava, the reaction simon had was the clearest you’d ever seen. his breath hitched, chest rising and falling rapidly. his gaze, so dilated it was almost entirely black, narrowed on your face. it darted between your features, like he was searching for some sort of hidden meaning in your words, like he didn’t quite believe you.

in retaliation, your hand, trembling only slightly, came up and grazed the too-large tent in his trousers. immediately simon’s hand gripped your wrist, squeezing his eyes shut and inhaling sharply.

“kid—” he said then, and the word was wrapped in molten heat. it was gravelly in a way you’d never heard before, a rumble in his chest. goosebumps broke out along your skin. “don’t start something you’ll regret.”

“i’m not,” you stated bravely, daringly. you adjusted your position, only to face him better, and he did not let go of your wrist. you hoped he couldn’t feel the rapid thrum of your pulse beneath his thumb. “please, simon. i want this. i’ve wanted this.”

that snagged on something in his brain; caught his attention and held it. he stared at you, intense as ever. behind his gaze was a dilemma; a war you could only see traces of. after a few suffocatingly long moments spent beneath heavy tension, something won out, and the grip on your wrist loosened.

immediately, with years of want behind your touch, you grazed your hand over his clothed length once more. the breath in your chest stuttered when you grasped it, feeling just how big he was beneath your fingers.

a sound rumbled in simon’s chest; a groan of sorts. exploratorily, you tilted your head down, holding his burning gaze as you brushed your lips over his trousers.

“fuck,” simon cursed, hand grasping the back of your skull. he didn’t push or move you at all; he simply held it there, like he couldn’t bare to not be touching you himself.

the button of his trousers was difficult to undo with shaking hands, but you managed, pulling down his fly barely seconds after. with uneven breaths, you delved beneath the band of his briefs, pulling him up and out of the fabric.

the sight of simon’s cock was enough to get you off on it’s own; too thick for one of your hands to wrap around it, long enough that it bobbed against his shirt as you stared, too entranced for embarrassment. he was uncut, and there was a mound of curly, dirty-blond hair at the base, trimmed just enough to stay out of the way. you exhaled, breath ghosting along his length. the grip simon had on you tightened

again, you looked up at him. simon’s gaze was unwavering, as if looking away was some sin he was too pious to commit. it was then, as he gazed down at you with a burning gaze, that he seemed to read something in your expression. a pleading, a search for guidance. whatever it was, it had him speaking. “go ahead, sweet girl. get y’mouth on me.”

like his words triggered some sort of instinctual response in your body, your mouth was immediately moving. you licked a long, languid stripe from base to tip, revelling in the warm, salty taste. then, your lips wrapped around the head, suckling slightly before descending another inch.

“fuck,” he cursed again, hand moving in soothing circles against the back of your skull. “good fuckin’ girl. such a good listener, aren’t you?“

the words pulled a whimper from your throat. you released his dick for the briefest moment, a string of saliva connecting you, before wrapping your lips around him again, hollowed cheeks taking as much as you could manage. the fact that it was only half was disappointing.

“christ, angel. y’mouth is — heaven. fuck.” the choked sound of his voice only emphasized his point. when you made another noise, something between a whimper and a whine, he chuckled, and said, “like me talking to you like that? telling you how good you are? fuck, y’re so sweet. my sweet girl.”

moaning against him, you attempted to take more. betrayed by your gag reflex, you pulled back, choking, eyes glistening with tears.

simon cooed, hands cupping your jaw and thumb brushing over your cheek, wiping away a tear that’d escaped. “oh, angel, y’don’t need to take so much so fast. you’re doing so well. lemme show you. is that okay? can i help you?”

swallowing the excess drool in your mouth, you nodded, and his eyes crinkled with a smile. then, he was pulling his balaclava up, the seam stretched over his nose as he pressed a kiss to your forehead.

“words, love.” though his voice was soft, it was a command. “thought i taught you this already.”

“please,” you whispered. “show me how,” his face was close enough to see the thin wrinkles around his eyes, the soft dusting of a five o’clock shadow over his jaw. “wanna make you feel good.”

simon’s lips curved before they pressed against yours, all gentle and soft like you’d break if he were any rougher. it was inebriating to be treated so reverently, hands holding your jaw like you were something precious. simon made you feel like you were.

his lips moved languidly. he took control of it easily, guiding your lips with his own. he didn’t escalate it, didn’t shove his tongue into your mouth like so many other boys had. he kissed like he found pleasure in this alone.

arms tangling around his neck, you gently ran your nails over the nape of his neck, where fabric met skin. simon groaned, softly nipping at your bottom lip. you giggled.

as much as you adored this — you’d kiss simon for hours if he’d let you — you were getting impatient. you’d gotten a taste for him, and you were quickly becoming addicted.

when you pulled away, he let you, stare darting between your kiss-swollen lips and glazed-over eyes. he watched your gaze trail back down to his crotch, and chuckled quietly.

“eager thing, aren’t you?” he questioned, leaning in to press one last kiss to the corner of your mouth. “go ahead, trouble.”

you didn’t need to be told twice — keeping your head on his lap, you laid out on your belly, across the couch. his hand found your head again, and this time, he gently guided you forward, allowing your lips to find his cock once more.

“that’s it, love,” he murmured. he had you stay like that for a while, suckling contentedly on the head and lapping your tongue over his slit.

“if y’need to come up for air, tap my thigh, alright?” he instructed. you nodded, before correcting yourself, allowing him to slip from your mouth only to voice, “okay.”

simon exhaled, the sound shaking towards the end as your long laved the underside of the head. “good fuckin’ girl.”

though you’d blown guys before, this — simon — was different. something about him, his scent or the sound of his voice or simply his presence, created a haze that had your mind going cloudy. with your lips wrapped tightly around his cock, your world started and ended with simon riley.

little by little, he inched you down his cock. never too quick and never too much. in that moment, he seemed to know your body better than you. always stopping just before your gag reflex was triggered, just before your limit was reached.

“look at you, breathing outta your nose. you’re a natural.”

your breathy moan vibrated against simon’s cock; his thighs tensed, though he didn’t buck his hips or push you down. he continued his languid pace, inching you down only when you could handle it.

“so good,” he muttered. at this point you’d taken more than half of of him. breathing steadily out of your nose, you used a spare hand to grip the remaining length, pumping it in time with your mouth. “fuck. ah, angel, ‘m gonna cum if you keep tha’ up.”

spurred on, you hollowed your cheeks and took another inch, blinking away tears. his pelvis barely a few centimeters from your nose, now, and with one last deep breath, you swallowed back the rest of his cock.

“fucking christ—!” simon swore, pulling you off of him as gently as he could manage. you sputtered, coughing and sniffling as tears ran freely from your eyes.

“oh, none of that now, love,” he cooed, big hands cradling your jaw as he kissed away your tears.

“did i do something wrong?” you asked. your voice was raw.

“no, no. of course not, love. you could never do anything wrong,” he stated, pressing a lingering kiss to your hairline. then, he chuckled, warm breath ghosting along your skin. “‘m not as young as i used to be, pretty girl. ‘n if i’m finishing tonight, i want it to be in this sweet cunt.” to make his point, he cupped you over your panties, which had become embarrassingly wet over the last bit. sensitive, you whimpered, curling further into him and grinding down. “how’s that sound, hm? y’gonna let me fill y’up?”

vehemently, you nod, gripping the wrist that’d snuck up your skirt for support. “please. yeah, yeah. i want that, si.”

with shaking hands, you gripped the bottom of your top in an attempt to yank it off. swiftly, simon stopped you, one hand large enough to catch the both of yours. “mm-mm. if ‘m gonna fuck you, ‘m gonna do it proper. y’deserve better than a shitty couch, dove.”

in the next breath, you were swept up into simon’s arms, legs wrapped tightly around his torso. a high-pitched squeak escaped you and tapered into a laugh as he carried you up the stairs, towards his bedroom.

“such a gentleman,” you joked, toying with the collar of his shirt.

“i try’,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to your palm when it cupped his jaw.

after closing the door behind him, simon gently dropped you on the bed. you giggled as you bounced, bracing yourself on your elbows and looking up at him. for a moment, simon stood, gaze locked on your frame, fists clenching and unclenching at his sides.

“fucking hell,” he cursed, finally. “you’re a dream.”

“a dream?” you echoed, grin simpering into a smirk. “y’been dreamin’ about me, riley?”

in a single, fluid motion, simon tugged his shirt off. he was a mass of muscle, age just barely softening his edges. tattoos ran up his arms and across most of his chest, where hair the same shade as his happy trail grew.

“‘course i have,” he answered, like it was obvious. then, he kicked off his slippers and fit himself between your legs, arms bracing himself just inches above you. “making me act like a fucking teenager again, wakin’ up to wet boxers.”

the thought of simon having wet dreams about you made your head spin. dumbly, you blinked up at him, and found yourself unimpressed with the balaclava still covering the upper-half of his face.

“can i?” you asked, voice quiet enough you wondered if he’d even be able to hear it. his small smile, though, gave him away. he nodded.

little by little, you rolled the offending material upward, revealing every mesmerizing inch of his face. tossing it to the side, you took a long moment to admire him: the long blond lashes, the sloping scars, the light spattering of freckles, his crooked nose.

“y’so pretty,” you stated, honestly. rose blossomed across his cheeks and nose, leaving you with a wide grin. simon pressed a kiss behind your ear, though you had a sneaking suspicion it was to hide his face.

“think that’s supposed t’be my line, love,” simon replied, gently nipping your throat. as you giggled, he continued downward, kisses growing sloppier as they reached your collarbones. then, he pulled back, fingers slipping over the hem of your shirt. he met your gaze for a brief second, searching for the permission you’d always give him, and tugged it off.

left in only the lacy scrap the lingerie shop deemed a bra, simon stated openly at you. this time, it was your turn to squirm, hands instinctively reaching to hide your face. easily, he caught your wrists.

“no. no. i wanna see you,” he said, squeezing your arms once. “cover your face and i stop, alright?”

huffing, you kept your hands at your side, and he twitched his lips. afterward, he smoothed large hands across your skin, over your stomach and ribs, cupping your chest. “so gorgeous.” he squeezed. “fuckin’ hate the idea of you going out in somethin’ like this when i’m not with you. no more. if y’wearin’ this, it’s for me, yeah? no one else.”

biting your lip, you nodded, not trusting your voice enough to speak. simon disagreed with your decision, seeing as he pinched your side. “no one else,” you affirmed.

“good girl.” he drew out the words, eyes trained on your chest, before he was reaching behind and unclamping your bra with his fingers. sliding it off, he tossed it haphazardly into the growing pile of clothes on his floor.

simon wasted no time in resuming his assault on your skin, leaving a kiss here and a bite there. he swirled his tongue over your tits, paying special attention to your nipples, playing with one while he had his mouth on the other. little marks littered your saliva-soaked skin when he reached the top of your skirt.

one more glance at you and he was tugging it down, along with the flimsy nylons you’d worn. swiftly, he pressed an open-mouthed kissed to your cloth-covered cunt, easily keeping your hips down when they tried to buck.

the air was cold against your soaked cunt when he peeled back the fabric, pulling it over your ankles and discarding it on the floor. as had become his habit, simon took a moment to admire you. eyes blazing and turning the skin beneath it warm. your hands fisted the blankets as you resisted the urge to cover up.

“so pretty,” he said, moving backward down the bed and climbing off it. then, he tugged you with him, earning a tiny yelp, before kneeling at the end of it. “wanted t’taste you for fucking ever. y’gonna let me, sweetheart? hm? you gonna let me taste your sweet cunt?”

nodding, you squeezed your eyes shut and breathed, “please, simon.”

his fingers, warm and steady, trailed up your thighs, pulling a shiver from you. “spread your legs a little wider for me, baby. there y’go. good.” then, slowly, they inched towards your centre, spreading you open. you didn’t have to look to know he was staring.

all at once, his tongue was on you, licking a long stripe up your folds and over your clit. you moaned embarrassingly loudly, trailing off into a long whine when he didn’t let up. your fingers knitted themselves in his blond waves, tugging as gently as you could manage. he groaned in approval, the sound vibrating through your cunt and sending your back arching.

“fuck! simon,” you yelped. his hands held your legs apart when they attempted to close, overwhelmed by pleasure.

he slipped away from your heat only to say, “keep sayin’ my name.”

whining, you pushed his head back into you, and he chuckled, resuming his ministrations on your cunt. simon was talented with his tongue — something jealous burned you at the thought of how he got so good. the thought was quickly scrubbed from your brain, though, when he flicked the tip of his tongue over your clit, circling it once, twice, before descending again.

“please,” you whined, though you didn’t know what you were asking for. his pace had slowed, now, sloppily making out with your cunt like it was something he could worship. “simon . . . ”

the pleasure was inescapable; your body was torn between grinding down on his mouth and trying to wriggle away from it. it didn’t help that he was doing it so leisurely; tongue moving languidly through your folds and over your clit like it was for his pleasure instead of yours. that thought got you off all the more.

your legs trembled, winding around simon’s head and damn near suffocating him — not that he cared. when you glanced down, he was watching you, nose shiny as it brushed against your clit. simon smirked — you could feel the movement against you.

had you been in any other state, the sound you made as you tumbled over the edge might have embarrassed you. as it was, though, you didn’t have the mind for anything other than pleasure as your back bowed off the bed and your legs tightened around simon’s skull.

he was saying something — you only understood bits of it, but it sounded like a mindless litany of praise. “there you are, there we go. so good, so fucking good.”

he paired each praise with a kiss to your cunt until you were trembling from overstimulation, just pushing past the edge of too much. simon climbed up the bed and pressed wet kisses across your face; when he licked into your mouth and you tasted yourself, you moaned.

“you’re a fuckin’ vision, sweetheart. never knew you’d cum so pretty. y’gonna let me see it again? hm? y’gonna let me fuck you, baby?”

you were nodding before the words were even out of his mouth, snaking your arms around his neck and kissing him deeply. without breaking it for longer than a few seconds, simon moved the two of you further up the bed until your head rested against his surprisingly soft pillows.

simon groaned appreciatively when your nails scraped against his skull. you grinned, and breathed, “you like pain just as much as me.”

simon chuckled, biting your chin. “maybe. when it’s you.”

“what was that you said earlier? something ‘bout feeding my ego?”

another laugh, and he joked, “i’m too far gone, now, i think. i’m just here to serve.”

“prove it.” your lips curved into a lust-drunk smile. “fuck me.”

with one last peck against your lips, simon smirked, and said, “yes ma’am.”

he leaned over you, then, tugging open the creaky drawer to his bedside table and fishing around. “shit.”

“hm?” you hummed, following his gaze to the foil packet between his fingers.

“‘s fuckin’ expired.” simon’s brow furrowed, and he brought the packet closer, squinting. you grabbed it from him, tossing it on the floor.

“i don’t care,” you said, probably stupidly, but the thought of not fucking simon right now had something foul twisting in your belly. “want you.”

running broad hands over your legs, simon gazed down at you, like your expression would say otherwise. you rolled your eyes. “i’m clean. i’m assuming you’re clean, if your condoms are expired.” simon pinched your side, and you giggled. ”please? want you to fuck me, simon.”

simon exhaled, and shook his head, smirking. “yeah?” he asked, fingers trailing over your belly. “y’want me to fuck you? cum in this little cunt?”

“yeah, yeah. please. want that.”

his lips press against yours again, hands continuing their journey downward until he was exploring your sensitive folds. you whimpered, quietly, but simon caught the sound and tutted. “i know, sweets. but i��ve gotta stretch you. don’t wanna hurt you, right? not tonight.”

lubing his fingers up with your slick, he started with his middle, circling your hole before slowly pushing inward. your earlier orgasm had relaxed you already, and he was able to add a second in no time. he explored for a moment, pumping his fingers in and out, curling them upward until he found that spongy spot that had your head rolling back in pleasure.

“there it is,” he said, and though your eyes were squeezed shut, you felt his smirk against your skin; heard it in his voice. “that feel good, pretty?”

the answering nod you gave was shaky and sudden, hands gripping onto his forearm for dear life. “fuck me, si. please—want your cock.”

“i know, i know. one more finger, how about that? then we can give you what you need.”

with a groan, you nodded, and sent him a short glare. he snorted, and muttered, “so impatient.”

“been waiting for fucking years,” you argued, though your point might’ve been lost in the quiver of your voice. “‘m allowed to be a little impatient.”

“years, hm?” his third finger prodded at your entrance. “guess i should hurry, then. poor thing.”

the way you dug your nails into his skin was both in pleasure and retaliation. three thick fingers pumped slowly in and out of you, curling in a way that had your thighs shaking.

finally, he slipped the fingers from you, the whine you gave turning into a moan when he plunged them into his mouth instead, savouring every bit of you. “so fuckin’ sweet.”

when simon’s fat tip ran through your folds, you tensed, and questioned if three fingers would really be enough. “simon . . . ”

though his voice was strained, he stopped, glancing up at you. “yeah, sweetheart?”

“i don’t—” his tip ran over your clit ”—fuck, i don’t know if you’ll fit.”

simon tsked, the hand not controlling his cock coming up to brush the hair out of your face. “don’t gimme that, sweets. you can take it, i know you can.” he kissed your jaw. “i’ll make it fit, yeah? how’s that?”

shakily, you exhaled, meeting his gaze. truly, you didn’t know if it’d wavered from your face all night. his eyes were so sure — you could do nothing but believe him. it’d fit. you nodded.

“yeah, yeah. there’s my girl.” again, his lips were on yours, tongue licking into your mouth. minty toothpaste, tea, and cigarettes overwhelmed your senses as his thick tip pushed inside, swallowing every moan you gave.

when he’d made it a few inches, simon pulled back. “how’s that?” he questioned. “y’okay, lovey? want me to keep going?”

you couldn’t nod fast enough. there was a bit of pain, but the pleasure of the stretch won out easily. tangling your hands in his hair, you yanked simon back down for a long, messy kiss. really, it was more so a clash of teeth and tongue and heavy breathing than a kiss, but you digress.

by the time simon was fully sheathed inside you, it felt like he was in your fucking lungs. he gave you as much time as you needed to adjust, though the way his fists clenched and unclenched beside your head proved how greatly he wanted to move. digging one of the legs wrapped around him further into his skin, you urged him to.

“fucking christ,” he groaned. simon dropped his head for a moment, hot breath fanning over your neck as he slowly rocked in and out. “y’so fucking tight.”

“m’not tight, you’re just huge,” you argued, a furrow in your brow. simon bit the juncture between your throat and shoulder—you giggled, the sound delirious.

propping himself up on his forearms once more, simon slowly pulled out, leaving only his tip inside of you, before swiftly thrusting back in, setting a harsh, steady pace.

little high-pitched sounds came from your chest with every thrust, cock abusing that spongy spot inside you that lit fireworks behind your eyelids. with the way you were clawing at his back, you’d be surprised if simon didn’t look like he was mauled by a wildcat tomorrow.

“so good. gripping me like a fuckin’ vice. swear it was like you were made for me,” he breathed, teeth grazing over your ear.

sense had long since left you — you only nodded, murmuring back, “for you, f’you.”

maybe the way his cock kissed your cervix would have you cursing tomorrow, maybe the way your back bowed with pleasured tension would have you hunching over in the morning — you didn’t care. right now, your world consisted of simon’s searing brown eyes and the toe-curling pleasure he supplied.

“feels so good.” your words were breathy, punctuated with a tug to his hair.

“yeah?” he questioned, smiling lopsidedly. “good. gonna fucking ruin you. you’ll never be able to take another cock without thinking of me—thinking of how good i made you feel.”

shaking your head, you whines, “no. no one else. only you.”

simon growled, thrusting especially hard as he licked and sucked at your throat. “yeah. you’re mine, aren’t you? my girl.”

“yours,” you nodded. “‘m yours, f’rever.”

simon groaned out a slew of curses, cock twitching inside of you. one hand reached down toy with your clit, making quick, slippery circles. “want you to cum again, baby. ‘m not gonna last much longer and — fuck — i need t’see it again.”

you’d already been dancing along the edge — his thick fingers and raspy words were a harsh push, leaving you dangling by one hand.

your eyes rolled back into your head, and his other hand was swiftly gripping your chin, gently shaking you. “on me, love, keep y’r eyes on me.”

with great effort, you kept your hazy gaze on his face, which was twisted in the effort to stave off his orgasm. you whimpered, and murmured, “say it again. say i’m yours. please.”

“oh, sweetheart,” he groaned, head dipping into the crook of your neck for a moment before finding your eyes again. “you’re mine, ain’t ya? my sweet girl. yeah. an’ i’m yours — always will be.”

the second the words left his mouth, you tumbled over the edge. your entire body shook, curving inward and wrapping itself around simon like it was trying to burrow inside him. in the haze of it, you heard simon shout, before warmth was spilling inside your cunt, filling you up to the fucking brim. if simon wasn’t simon, you were sure the grip you had on him would’ve broken something by now.

when you came back to, the world was quiet — soft breathing echoed through your ears, his and yours indistinguishable from each other. simon’s head was buried in your neck, the weight of him just bridging the edge of uncomfortable. it was bliss.

eventually, he rolled over, cock pulling out with an equally disgusting and enticing squelch. his spend leaked out of you, dirtying his sheets. neither of you minded, it seemed — he easily pulled you across his chest, pressing his lips to your warm forehead.

“y’with me, lovie?” his voice was barely more than a murmur.

you hummed, hand moving upward to trace over his sweat-soaked chest. “i think so.”

a quiet laugh vibrated in his chest, breath dancing across your face. you smiled in turn, crooking your neck to gaze at him. keeping in theme with the rest of the night, simon was already staring at you — his eyes seemed to shine when they found yours, and his lips curled up in a rare smile. you were met with the embarrassing urge to take a picture.

“you’re a mess,” he stated, chuckling quietly as his eyes darted across your face and body.

narrowing your eyes, you pinched his pec, and his chuckle became a laugh. “a beautiful mess, sweetheart. ‘s the prettiest you’ve ever looked, i promise.”

you rolled your eyes, and argued, “‘s your fault.” then, attempted to sit up — though his strong grip on your shoulder kept you down. simon frowned. “where d’you think you’re going?”

“i need to pee,” you stated, and he let you up with a huff. “then i need to fucking shower, again.”

simon made a sound. “how ‘bout i run you a bath, hm? lemme do the work.”

smiling softly, you glanced back at him. he took your hand that lingered on his chest and brought it to his mouth, pressing kisses over your knuckles. “that’d be lovely.”

simon stood, and when you looked over him, you smiled. hair mussed, lips swollen, skin glazed in sweat — he was just as much of a mess as you. in a single movement, simon swept you into his arms. with a yelp, you clung to him, and he carried you, bridal-style, into the bathroom.

placing you on the lip of the bathtub, simon left for only a moment to dig through his linen closet, and returned with a wash cloth. after running it under warm water in the sink, he helped you up once more and gently ran it between your legs.

afterward, while you used the restroom, simon ran the bath, using that intoxicating body-wash as bubble bath. spotting his back, which was covered in bright-red scratches, you giggled, feeling only a little bad.

“i’d say sorry for y’back, but really i look no better,” you stated. hickies and bite-marks littered your skin, decorating your neck, chest, and thighs.

snorting, simon moved to look in the mirror, eyes tracing the pinkish abrasions trailing from shoulders to spine. “i’ll wear ‘em with pride.”

once the tub had filled, steam dancing around the mound of bubbles, simon, again, helped you up. his skin was warm, and if the bath wasn’t so enticing, you’d be tempted to stay here, pressed against him.

easily, he lifted you up and into the bath, following you not long afterward. it was a shock he could fit all of his limbs in the tub, even moreso when you could fit between his legs. it was a bit squishy, but you couldn’t have traded it for anything — laying against his chest while his hands ran up and down your body. thighs, stomach, chest, arms — he touched you softly, reverently, lips pressing behind your ear.

“did you mean it?” you asked. the quiet hum of your voice seemed loud in the silence of the room.

“mean what, love?”

swallowing, you played with his fingers, and supplied, “that ‘m yours. that you’re mine.”

simon exhaled, and you could feel the small curve of his lips against the back of your neck. “i meant it.”

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strongheartneteyam · 1 month

Text

Realize where you belong.

Pairing: neteyam sully x female!dreamwalker!reader/female!human!reader

cw: sexual content, possessive neteyam, tsaheylu, semi public sex, dominant neteyam, missionary position, doggy position, TRIGGER WARNING for brief mention of non con, dirty talk, sub reader, fluff, yearning, masturbation, tenderness. I might remember more and add later lol

After AGES (sorry for the hiatus, my loves :( I needed it), the so anticipated smut chapter of his story 🥺💓 I've been wanting to let my babies (yes, I love my characters to this point lol) have this special, intimate moment for so long 😭 it just wasn't the right time yet but now here it is. I wrote a part of this chapter in public, in a cafeteria inside a supermarket and damnnnn my pussy was clenching so much lol it was a weird situation lmao fuck I need Neteyam inside of me istg I can't anymore 😭 I hope my dear readers enjoy this <33

PS: in this story, Neteyam was shot on his arm when he was fighting the RDA, not on his chest, hence a scar on his arm is gonna be mentioned.

Slightly proofread. I'll edit it as soon as I can.

Chapter 9

ˏˋ°•*⁀➷

I don't wanna look at anything else now that I saw you

I can never look away

I don't wanna think of anything else now that I thought of you

Things will never be the same

I've been sleeping so long in a 20-year dark night

Now I'm wide awake

And now I see daylight, I only see daylight

(...)

All of you, all of me intertwined

Daylight (Taylor Swift)

ˏˋ°•*⁀➷

Neteyam's lips kissed your neck in a perfect mix of tenderness and passion. Your whimpers filled the air as you felt his big bulge rubbing against your ass and Neteyam took that as a sign that you were enjoying that level of intimacy with him. He was finally able to show you how much he craved you, how just the thought of your wet pussy made him get hard as a rock.

Neteyam was leaking so much precum for you, his loincloth had a stain on it from his thick salty liquid, as he kept rubbing himself against your butt in a languid yet delicious pace, almost driving you insane.

His four fingers hovered over the sensitive skin of your arm.

"Your skin feels so soft, oeyä muntxate… just touching it makes me get even harder for you."

You turned your head back to look at him and his amber eyes stared deep into yours. Your fingers softly touched his beautiful face, tracing his dark blue stripes and his freckles.

Neteyam let out a deep breath and closed his eyes, savoring your touch. You turned yourself around completely, your body towards him now, and your lips reached for Neteyam's mouth. You softly kissed him, feeling how plump and wet his lips were. Neteyam eagerly kissed you back as soon as your soft mouth came in contact with his. His tongue sneaked between your upper and your lower lip carefully but passionately and you opened your mouth wider so he could explore the insides of it. Neteyam laid over you and you felt his cock growing even harder and bigger, now pressed against your soaking wet pussy, still covered by your clothes. You wanted him so bad, he made you so weak that you couldn't help but moan against his lips. Neteyam ended the kiss leaving two pecks in your lips delicately.

“I want you so bad… your body, your scent, your lips on mine…”

Neteyam touched the sleeves of your white cropped top slightly, taking his time, not wanting to startle you or make you feel like he doesn't respect your boundaries, but Eywa knows there was a hungry animal inside of him who only wanted to bury himself deep inside your tight pussy, rough and merciless. His animalistic side wanted to hunt you down and catch you like a prey, mating with his female, taking what's his. But he knew it was too soon to act like that. This was gonna be your first time together and the last thing he wanted was to scare you, to drive you away. He could not live without you again. He needed to have the scent of your skin on him to survive.

His fingers finally reached the hem of your top and as he watched your body language, Neteyam noticed you welcomed his actions, so, he took your top off, your hair getting a little messed up as he passed it over your head. He threw it to the side and couldn't care less about where it had landed because all he could focus on was your breasts. They were much bigger than the breasts of the other na'vi girls, as you were in an Avatar body. That pleased him beyond reason. Neteyam's hands traveled through the delicate blue skin of your tits, caressing it with the most tender touch, his fingers drawing over your bioluminescent freckles. You watched his face, the way he looked dumb with desire and longing, his mouth half open, his breath heavy.

“Oeyä muntxate, how can you be even more beautiful in this body? Your human breasts drive me crazy, you know that, but these… your pink nipples contrasting with your blue skin, these stripes, your little freckles… fuck, my love… I wanna suck on your titties, bury my face on them and never let go.”

You chuckled slighty “Then I think you should. I'm yours, Neteyam.”

“Yeah? You're mine? Say it again. Say you're only mine.” He dared teasingly

“I'm only yours, Neteyam. My body belongs to you.” Neteyam's smile was big and proud

One of his hands cupped your right breast as he took your lips on his, tasting the softest mouth he had ever kissed.

Neteyam kissed the tip of your cat like nose, then left kisses on your mouth, your chin and your throat. His lips rapidly found your nipple and he took it inside his mouth, suckling on it profusely, his hunger taking over him. Your na'vi ears moved downwards, your mouth was half open and your eyes closed, your back arching slighty. Your folds got wetter and wetter as he sucked on your other tit now like he had been starving for that for way too long and it had been killing him.

Neteyam traced your stomach slowly with his fingers, the bare touch of his digits scorching you with delight. He carefully started to unbutton your shorts as he looked into your eyes, as if asking for permission. You nodded and he slid your piece of clothing down your legs. You opened your legs slightly and his big hand cupped your pussy, covered by your soaking wet panties. That made a thought pop up in your mind: did female Avatars have a hymen? Would you feel pain and bleed once he penetrated you? You never bothered to ask about that to your teachers because… well… you never thought you'd be having sex in your Avatar body. You could never imagine that Neteyam would appear to you. Never… that made you hold back a smile but the corners of your lips curled up, in stubbornness.

“Why are you smiling?” Neteyam teased “Do you like when I touch you like this, muntxate?”

“Yes.” Even though that wasn't why you were smiling, that was undeniably true.

Neteyam smiled, proud of himself, and wrapped his tail around your leg, making you feel owned by him and that always turned you on beyond explanation.

He just wanted to pleasure his precious mate already. The way your juices smelled was driving him mad. Neteyam needed to finally have your taste all over his tongue. But before that, he wanted to do something important.

“It's time, tanhì. Tsaheylu.” He was nervous to ask you for something that was utterly normal and natural to his people but could be so very weird to you. In that moment, Neteyam was so aware that you had been raised in a totally different culture. That as much as you were na'vi in your soul and was in your na'vi body now, you were still… human.

But you eagerly consented. He breathed out, relieved and the fearful look left his face, where now there was a soft smile, showing no teeth.

Your fingers trembled softly as you took your long braid in your hand and your tendrils were now free, the delicate, thin extremities dancing in the air.

“No need to be nervous, yawne. You're my mate. We belong to each other. Do you trust me?”

You looked at him with doe eyes “I do. I'm not scared. Just nervous.” You smiled coyly and he kissed your hand tenderly

When you both brought your pinkish tendrils together and they intertwined, you felt a powerful wave piercing through your whole being.

How do you explain that you can see yourself through someone's thoughts? How do you explain that you can feel, not sense, but literally feel how much the person you love loves you back, just like your spirits are one and the same? Your teachers in the laboratory taught you that tsaheylu worked very similarly to how synapses work in the human brain, extremely similar actually. Neteyam was passing to you his emotions through his kuru and so were you, like you both… had the same mind. As weird as it sounds to a human being, you never knew you needed that invincible, raw connection until that moment. It was euphoria running through your veins but also calming too. It almost did not make sense… but it did. It cannot be explained rationally, you can't use your brain to understand it. Only your heart will. His electrical waves invaded your body and your soul like a sword, its blade so sharp, the love so strong, that none of your barriers could keep him away, keep him from becoming one with you. You could only wonder if that was real, if that moment wasn't just a part of a crazy dream.

That's the best you could come up with to try to explain something as ethereal and sacred as tsaheylu. There are no words, at least not in the limited English language that you could try to use that would convey the feeling that it was having Neteyam's tendrils intertwining with yours. It was like they were made to be there, together, connected. Like some force said so in the beginning of time and there was nothing nobody could ever do to prevent it. Just like the cycle of life, it was an unstoppable force, you and him, the love you shared.

You hadn't realized when you had closed your eyes but once you opened them, you saw Neteyam with his eyes still closed and his lips parted, like he was in a trance. You couldn't help but smile. Was he feeling something as strong as you did? After a few seconds, he opened his sparkling golden eyes. Neteyam smiled at you and held onto your waist, kissing you passionately.

He gently pushed you to lay on your back, his hands on your shoulders. Neteyam left a trail of delicate kisses in between your breasts and went down, opening your legs.

“I'm addicted to how you smell. How can you have this power over me, yawne?” His wide eyes were locked on yours while he pronounced those enticing words

Neteyam kissed your navel and licked over your wet panties, tasting your juices. Your breath got caught in your throat, so good it felt. He got rid of the last piece of clothing keeping him from tasting your cunt - that now belonged to him. Neteyam was impatient, it was like he needed to eat you out right now or he would die.

When his mouth finally reached your pussy and he licked your soaking wet folds for the first time and your taste invaded his taste buds, it was like he was gonna explode. His tongue lapped on your cunt over and over, desperately, like an animal, like you had just awakened his rut, even though it wasn't possible. But maybe it was. You had a hold on him that no other girl had ever had. And he knew that there would never be anyone else for him but you. Neteyam ate your pussy like you had the best taste he ever had on his tongue. And you did. He had been yearning to taste you for so long. Just touching himself thinking about you hadn't been enough for some time. He was so, so grateful to Eywa that he was finally there, with you, mating with the girl he loved so much, the girl who had turned him from a man into a burning flame, so strong was the desire he felt for you.

“Yawntu…” Neteyam cried “You taste so good…” he sucked on your clit, making your pussy feel hot and your entrance clench around nothing, aching to be fucked by his cock.

You were now no longer a girl but a moaning mess. There was a boiling pool of pleasure in your lower stomach. Your body contorted under him

When he was done eating your cunt, Neteyam sat on his ankles, and took his cock in his hand, its impressive girth and length turning you on, making your pussy get wetter, your inner thighs all sticky.

Neteyam started to jerk himself off, his swollen tip pouring precum out insanely while he gazed at your body with lust tainted eyes.

It was such a sight to see, so hot it had your heart beating at the speed of light and you felt your pussy walls clenching around nothing.

You could not believe he was like that because of you. Were you that pretty? So pretty that you were able to get the attention of such a gorgeous creature? Getting to the answer didn't matter, though. All that mattered to you at that moment was how hot he was and how crazy he was for your body. Neteyam's huge cock made you feral and you knew he was feral over your body too.

"Can I put it in, baby?" Neteyam asked, still stroking his blue cock. You watched him use his four slender fingers to stimulate himself with want in your eyes. The way the veins there were all loaded with blood… Fuck. "Need you so bad…" he cooed, yearning.

"Yeah" You meant to speak but it came off more like a moan

Neteyam gave you a lustful look with his wide feline eyes, the yellow in them luring you in as they shone like gold.

He put his cock on your entrance, making you quiver a little by the slightest contact of his member with your cunt. When he had all his length inside of you, there was the animalistic Neteyam again. The one you met that night outside your bedroom window, the one who could barely keep himself from forcing his body on you.

"You're mine!" Neteyam said and then groaned "All mine! Ahhh, fuck, yawne!" He kept slamming his hips vigorously against yours

No words could possibly come out of your mouth at that time. All your brain would let you do was moan loudly.

"Eywa… you're clenching so much around my cock" He chuckled "Do you like being fucked by me as much as I like fucking you?" He said, while thrusting deep into you.

"Mmmgh…" You pathetically mewled

"Yes, you do, yawnetu" Neteyam let out a sexy, almost cocky smirk. He loved knowing he could melt you like that, give you so much pleasure you couldn't even speak.

Neteyam kept fucking you hard, slamming his hips against yours, his tip reaching deep inside your body, poking at your womb, bruising your insides but bringing you to a state of raw pleasure that you never thought your body was capable of feeling.

He felt divine as he buried himself inside your sensitive flesh, his moans just would not stop filling your ears, turning you on beyond reason, driving you closer and closer to the edge of Paradise.

“Get on all fours for me, oeyä muntxate”

You obeyed Neteyam's command without thinking twice.

In the blink of an eye, he was inside of you again, reaching deeper this time, making you moan in an addictive mix of pain and delight as his swollen tip reached your womb with every thrust.

"This pretty, tight pussy is all mine now. This body…" He let out an animalistic growl "so fucking hot, all for me. All mine. Yawne…" he moaned loud for you before he pulled out and pumped his cock as his warm, sticky seed fell all over your ass and reached the beginning of your lower back. That sight was by far the most beautiful thing Neteyam had ever seen. He had marked you as his. Completely. His cum covering your skin as a sign to show who you belonged to.

You laid at the wooden floor, flushed and panting a little as Neteyam smirked and kissed your back. He still breathed heavy as he ran his hand over your back, in a sensual caress. Neteyam was beyond proud of what he had done to his precious mate. Now you were utterly, undoubtedly and completely his.

༊⁀➷

When you two were holding each other, cuddling after having made love, you noticed a big scar on Neteyam's arm. How did you not notice it before? It was big and ragged. You felt bad for not noticing it before. But then you realized he wasn't wearing the brown beaded bracelet he used to always wear that day. That must be why. He hid his scar under his bracelet.

“I never noticed before that you had a scar on your arm”

He chuckled, trying to cover up his embarrassment. “Yes, I have one.”

“How did you get it?”

He breathed deeply and then let the air out, his eyes now clouded, like some terrible memory was hunting him. “Fighting against the demons. The Sky People.”

“I see…”

"It's kinda ugly, I know." He joked but you could see right through his smile and the obvious way he was now covering it with his hand. Neteyam was insecure about the way his skin looked with the scar on it.

You kissed the scar on his arm tenderly, your lips gentle as they did so.

"It's not ugly. I like it." You told Neteyam as your eyes were fixed on his scar "It only reminds me that you've been through something terrible but survived it, that you're strong." You looked up into his eyes again and Neteyam smiled at you tenderly yet coyly, showing no teeth.

“The bullet hit my artery. I bled so much when I got shot that my family thought I was gonna die. But I believe the Great Mother found a way to protect me because there was a female warrior with us and she was also a healer. She was able to stop the bleeding until they could get me to my grandmother, the Tsahìk. You know what a Tsahìk is, right?” He smiled softly, petting your face, his thumb gentle as the touch of a flower

“I do. They're the spiritual leaders and healers of the clans, right?”

“That's right, yawntu.” Neteyam was happy you knew a lot about his culture. The culture you should have been born in. You were his na'vi mate, in your soul you were na'vi. He knew it, he could feel it. Seeing you in your na'vi body (or in your Dreamwalking body, like his mother and grandmother used to say) felt so right. Like things finally were how they should be. You were just temporarily spending more time in the wrong body, the human one. But that would change soon.

Your heart hurt profusely, you wondered how your life would be if you hadn't met him, if he had died. It's weird to think this, but you felt like it would hurt you to lose him like that, even if you wouldn't be actually losing him if you would never have met him, right?

Even so… thinking about it made you almost despair. How can you love someone so much like that? That the mere thought of having never met him shatters you? And beyond that, you hated that he had got shot. By humans. Your kind. That made you feel dirty, ashamed to share DNA with such a despicable race, one capable of hurting and almost killing a young man who was just trying to protect his family, his people, his home.

You fought back tears and of course he noticed. Neteyam noticed everything about you. Nothing would go past his golden eyes.

“Hey, don't cry.” He said

“I hate that it happened to you.” He gave you a comforting smile

“I survived. It's okay.” All you could do was hug him tight, still stuck in the thought of having lost the opportunity of meeting the best person you ever laid eyes upon

He hugged you back, his arms making you feel at home. They were your home now. You were far too sacred in Neteyam's eyes, like a pure, delicate creature he must protect at any cost. And he would. Neteyam would live and die for you.

He was way more than you had ever dreamed of in a partner. He showed you a kind of love you never even thought could exist, so pure and strong and raw and powerful. You wanted it to engulf you. You wanted to dive deep into Neteyam's ocean and never come back for air again. You wanted to learn how to breathe under his waters, just so you could never leave the state of mind that being loved by him, feeling that love so strongly, all over you, burning you so good, put you in. It was a sweet ecstasy.

After a while, Neteyam walked you back to your small room in the laboratory and when you were safe, inside the building, he headed back to his family's hut. Your taste and the way you felt were still all over him, though. Your beautiful face was haunting his thoughts. A part of him was left with you.

༊⁀➷

"Can I go forward when my heart is here? Turn back, dull earth, and find thy center out.”

Romeo Montague - Romeo and Juliet (William Shakespeare)

༊⁀➷

This is the last chapter of the Part 1 of this story :) see you guys in Part 2, hopefully! Thank you all for reading it and being in this journey with our beloved characters until now 💕

•

Taglist:

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pippin-katz · 8 months

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One Shots in Red, White & Royal Blue - Part 1: Alex's Room

Modern movies are fucking obsessed with jump cuts. Even scenes where it is completely unnecessary get cut to shreds. There's films I've seen where one, single sentence line got three jump cuts in it.

After watching Red, White, & Royal Blue over ten times now, I’ve noticed so many moments where they could’ve made jump cuts, but didn’t. There were moments where I was expecting it to cut because of how used I am to other movies cutting the shit out of scenes. They did not do that here, and believe me, it makes a difference.

Cuts temporarily remind the viewer that they're watching something scripted, professionally filmed, and edited. It's a subconscious feeling that most people probably don't even notice.

In case you're unfamiliar, a one shot in film is when a sequence happens without any cuts. One of the benefits of using them is the believability they add. Any amount of time could've progressed between cuts, like if they film a scene on two different days. When you see everything happening in real time, it just feels more real.

Red, White, & Royal Blue balanced their editing and camerawork incredibly well, and utilized one shots way more than I see a lot of other films doing nowadays. They use it for a variety of scenes, and it's done very well.

Example No. 1

From this moment, where Henry enters the room:

GIF by taylorz-nicholasg

To Henry pushing Alex onto the couch:

GIF by sheisraging

To when the sequence ends:

GIF by gay-bucky-barnes

is ALL ONE SHOT.

There are no camera cuts during that sequence, and there's a significant amount of movement and activity going on.

They are obviously aggressively making out, and crossing the room at the same time. Tracking this part might be common, but when they get to the couch, and Henry pushes him, I got this gut feeling that a jump cut was about to happen, but it didn't.

Instead, the camera rotates around to that side perspective, and lets Henry come back into frame and onto the couch in real time.

GIF by sheisraging

The camera doesn't change position until Henry moves down, which could've been a cut to Alex's face, but they opted to zoom in on him, keeping the shot connected.

GIF by sheisraging

This is not a small series of events to capture in one shot, and it means that Nicholas and Taylor had to memorize and perform the entire scene's blocking as a whole rather than in parts. If they mess up, they can't just say: "hey try that line again"

A one shot scene like this means that if you mess up at any point during the sequence, you can't use the take. You have to do it again from the beginning. That's the point of a one shot.

I think it's such a testament to Taylor and Nicholas' talent, skill, and dedication that they did such a long shot involving so much intimate, and difficult, choreography.

Breaking it down, they have to kiss for the first part, but it's not just kissing; it's aggressive kissing. Their eyes are closed, and they're grabbing at each other, while crossing the room. Taylor has to walk backwards. They need to have really good spatial awareness in order to move without hitting something or tripping.

Once they hit the couch, Nicholas has to undo the buttons on Taylor's shirt. If you've ever worn a button-down shirt, you know that sometimes you just struggle with those damn buttons; there's a moment in Paris where they joke about them. Nick has to undo them fast, and deliver his lines too. If he's too slow with the buttons, or they get stuck, take ruined.

Nick has to shove Taylor onto the couch. He has to be visibly forceful, but not knock him down so hard he falls off the couch, or land in a way that make it difficult for him to shift into where he's supposed to be. Nick also has to climb around onto the couch fast enough.

Obviously once they're on the couch, the difficulty comes in that they are being intimate, kissing and grabbing each other, and they need to remain in character. Then they have lines, and Nicholas has to get even more intimate by kissing his neck. He undoes another button or two and kisses his chest and down his stomach, all while delivering his lines correctly.

If either of them messes up a line, or breaks character for a second, or loses their balance, or anything, go back to the start, do it all again.

That is so much, and the two of them nailed every part of it. I still admire how they were able to trust each other and become confident in doing all that they do.

This being a one shot created a really incredible scene. It's fluid, and grounded in space and time. It's not the only scene that's drastically improved by the fact that it's a one shot, so I'll probably write more essays breaking down those scenes cause this movie has me in a choke hold.

#red white and royal blue #rwrb #rwrb movie #rwrb thoughts #alex claremont diaz #taylor zakhar perez #nicholas galitzine #henry hanover stuart fox #firstprince

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writersblockiskillingme · 2 months

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I Bet You Think About Me | Coriolanus Snow

Pairing: Coriolanus Snow x fem!reader (District12!reader)

Summary: On the day of his wedding he had everything... except for the bride that he wanted.

Warning/s: angst, kind of like hurt/no comfort kind of thing, wedding, marriage without love, Coryo is drinking alcohol, reader is basically Lucy Gray in this situation, possible grammar and spelling mistakes

Author's note: I'M BACKK!! I missed writing so much, to be honest. All those Coryo and Lucy Gray edits to this song, plus the music video, inspired me to do this. Enjoy!

3 AM and I'm still awake, I'll bet you're just fine

Fast asleep in your city that's better than mine

And the girl in your bed has a fine pedigree

And I'll bet your friends tell you she's better than me, huh

Coriolanus Snow. The young president of Panem. He truly now felt like he had everything. He did an outstanding job as the Gamemaker. In fact, not long after, his work was praised so much that he could finally take that last step to get what he always, truly wanted. And he, in fact, did it. He was the newest president of Panem, and he knew that that was going to last for a very long time.

He had the title. He had the riches. He never had to starve ever again. He never had to wear poorly made clothes. He had the trust of the people in the Capitol, and he had the control of those in the Districts.

But as a president, everyone expected of him to choose his First Lady of Panem as quicklyaspossible, and he knew that it couldn't be just anybody.

So here he was today. Dressed up in a traditional but quite modern black tuxedo with a white undershirt and a purely white rose tucked into his suit on the right side of his chest. Standing in front of the mirror in his bedroom, preparing his wedding speech that he will have to say once he and Livia Cardew are standing on the aisle.

Livia Cardew. She was truly perfect for him. He didn't love her, of course, but that was also his own choice. That's what made her perfect for him.

Once he was forced to find himself a bride because every elite in the Capitol kept pushing, he realized that he truly had no choice. He had to keep up his reputation respectable. So, of course, he knew that his wife, the Future Lady of the Panem, couldn't be just anybody.

Livia Cardew was rich. Her family was too, of course. Their family was respected and considered quite important. Plus, she was pretty. He couldn't really deny that, really.

He chose power, money and reputation that Livia had instead of the love, kindness and compassion that came with you.

He chose it that day that he left you in the woods of District 12. He never knew what happened to you. Did you die? Did you manage to run away in the storm that somehow messed up his head. And perhaps High-as-a-kite-Bottom was telling him some sort of truth when he said that mysteries had a way of driving people mad. And perhaps, if he stayed with you, he would marry someone for love.

Coriolanus let out a groan, shaking his head in a poor attempt to shake those thoughts away. His love for you made him weak. Weak in a way that he never wanted to experience ever again.

Livia didn't have his heart like you did. He doesn't love her. Therefore, he shall never feel weak ever again. He wanted that. He wanted to never love Livia. It was easy, though. It was easy not falling in love with her. Easy compared to you.

But no! He simply refused to think about you on this day. The day of his wedding. He refused the thoughts of you to consume his mind once again. Coriolanus wouldn't let that happen.

So he turned back to the giant mirror that stood in front of him and started to go over his vows once again.

"My darling Livia. You are the most beautiful person I have every encountered." Coriolanus felt his breath shorten at his own lies. "And today, I am honored to be your husband."

It was so fake. It was so cheesy. It was so untrue.

He had to prepare the speech for his bride. For the bride that he never loved.

"Mr. President?" One of the servants came in and addressed him shortly. "It's time."

"I will be there shortly." Coriolanus replied coldly, and the servant closed the door behind him.

Once the door was closed shut once again, he let out a quite loud sigh. In just a few minutes Livia will become a Snow and he will have to proudly show off his little wife that tormented and made fun of him for years during his academy days.

With that thought, President Coriolanus Snow stepped forward towards the door. On the doorway, he lingered. He looked out of the window across his room. He looked out on the city of the Capitol and its glamor and riches and he once again came to a realization that Livia was a perfect fit for his lifestyle unlike you. But he won't ever think of you again.

With the thoughts of you that once again swarmed his head, he loudly closed the door behind himself. Slamming it shut.

Well, I tried to fit in with your upper-crust circles

Yeah, they let me sit in back when we were in love

Oh, they sit around talkin' 'bout the meaning of life

And the book that just saved 'em that I hadn't heard of

After the priest said everything that needed to be said and after Coriolanus, and Livia, did everything that needed to be done the young, freshly married couple walked towards the reception, quickly being surrounded by the Capitol's elite that eagerly introduced themselves like they were one of the most important people there.

Perhaps they were, not that Coriolanus cared even a slightest bit.

Livia was standing in the middle of the circle made by the numerous Capitol's elite while he was standing next to her, a glass of posca in his hand. He knew that drinking that liquid in his glass was not the smartest thing for him considering the fact that the alcoholic drink was perhaps a bit too strong.

Not like he considered it worth giving a damn. He needed something very strong to wash away the feeling of Livia Snow's lips on his once the priest said that he can now kiss his bride.

And now, as he took yet another sip from the tall glass, he still felt disgusted by her. Himself. The whole situation.

A few more minutes, that to Coriolanus felt like hours, passed by. The people's excited chatter. The joy of the new President and the Panem's First Lady was over-the-top evident on everyone's face, except for his.

Livia was bathing in attention that were given to her, smiling, quite pleased with the whole situation. Coriolanus felt like he was going to throw up as he watched the scene unfold in front of him as he, too, had to pretend to be happy with everything.

And perhaps it was to much of the posca that he drowned that night or perhaps it was all of the whiteness of the entire reception that made him think what he thought. Hear what he heard.

As he took another sip from the glass, he could have sworn that he heard that melodic voice that haunted both his dreams and his worst nightmares.

But now that we're done and it's over

I bet you couldn't believe

When you realized I'm harder to forget than I was to leave

And I bet you think about me

Coriolanus watched with wide eyes as you stood a few feet away from him, dressed in the blood-red dress that reached the floor barely as it hugged your frame perfectly. You, in your red dress, stood out so perfectly among the white clothes that every guest was required to wear. You stood out so much, he wondered how nobody but him noticed you.

You stood tall and proud by the enormously big wedding cake, which required the front door to be taken away so it could be placed where it was. Snow remembered watching the staff bringing in the cake, the door laying on the grass behind the servant as they carried the said cake. It was ridiculous.

You turned towards the cake, not noticing his ever so blue eyes trailing on you as you moved.

Coriolanus felt his breath shorten once again as he watched your everlasting beauty. He was suddenly very aware of the cool glass that contained posca in his hand and the cold sweat that was sliding down his spine. Was it panic? Was it anticipation? He didn't know.

He watched you as you stretched your hand out towards the top of the cake as you stood on the gigantic table where it was placed, your red heels clicking as you did so.

Suddenly, you knocked over two figures, one of himself and one of Livia dressed up for their wedding. He let out a quiet, barely audible, gasp as you did so and then slowly lowered yourself to the ground.

A little girl, dressed in white, a guest, appeared you as Coriolanus watched. You quickly froze, standing completely still. After a very short while, you slid your finger over the icing of the cake and put the finger in your mouth, tasting the cake.

The little girl smiled and did the same. You and the girl shared the smile before you struck your hand into the cake, ripping one piece out revealing the red color under the purely white cake before you shoved it into your mouth, eating it. The little girl ran off after getting the taste of the delicious cake as you chewed on your piece.

As you did so, Coriolanus and you established eye contact. You made a grimace that clearly indicated that you were disappointed that you had been caught.

Coriolanus Snow allowed himself to blink for a moment to compose himself, and once he re-opened, you were gone.

You grew up in a silver-spoon gated community

Glamorous, shiny, bright Beverly Hills

I was raised on a farm, no, it wasn't a mansion

Just livin' room dancin' and kitchen table bills

Coriolanus and Livia sat down at the front of the reception as the entertainer did his job. He entered the guests of the Capitol’s elite with the microphone in his hand, tight grip on it, which showed Coriolanus that he was nervous.

Coriolanus brushed it off because, all things considered, he was doing quite a good job. He even found himself laughing along to the jokes that were being made.

After one more joke, he turned to one of the Capitol’s elite to quietly, with a smile on his face, discuss the joke that was made. However, the moment he turned back around, his smile disappeared at the sight in front of him.

You were standing there, in a red suit, with a red microphone on your hands, making jokes.

"And then," you spoke in the fit of giggles. "He left me in the woods to die after he told me he loved me."

You laughed after it, and every single Capitol’s elite followed. Coriolanus felt like he wanted to die at that moment, the look of pure horror planted onto his face.

"And best of all was that he HIMSELF tried to kill me with a gun!" You smiled as you tapped a few times on the table near Livia as you pointed at him with a smile, and every single guest of the wedding reception broke into laughter once again.

This can't be real, can it? Coriolanus thought to himself as he watched you.

But you know what they say, you can't help who you fall for

And you and I fell like an early spring snow

But reality crept in, you said we're too different

You laughed at my dreams, rolled your eyes at my jokes

After that, you, out of nowhere, pulled out a little red box as you made your way towards Livia, who was looking at you with anticipation and excitement.

You handed her your gift as Coriolanus found it harder and harder to breathe.

Livia quickly, but gracefully, opened the box as she removed the ribbon on top.

And as she pulled out the shawl that belonged to Coriolanus' mother, he felt like he was going to scream at the top of his lungs.

It was the shawl that Coriolanus gifted to you back when the two of you took off into the woods. That was the only thing that he found once he started to chase you through the woods. He never found you, though.

Livia placed it around her as she thanked you for the gift. Everyone around you swooned at your sweet gesture as they clapped pleasingly.

You bowed your head down slowly after you drowned the glass of alcohol, falling into the crowd of guests. Disappearing once again.

Now you're out in the world, searchin' for your soul

Scared not to be hip, scared to get old

Chasin' make-believe status, last time you felt free

Was when none of that shit mattered 'cause you were with me

Coriolanus chased after you, trying to catch you. He was suddenly blinded by the light because of the photographer that was taking pictures.

After the photographer went away, Coriolanus rubbed his eyes as his vision, thankfully, turned back to normal. He looked ahead.

And there you were. In a while wedding dress. The back of the dress was trailing behind you. The dress was also graced by white roses all over it. Your hair was in a type of hairstyle that was holding it all up. Your eyes were watching his every move as you stood in front of him.

Coriolanus felt like he couldn't breathe, and so, for a moment, he felt himself longing to cherish every moment of this.

It was just like Coriolanus had imagined it. You as his bride, himself as your groom. It was everything that he truly needed. Everything he ever wanted. Just you and him. You two of you having your first dance as a freshly married couple.

Suddenly, all lights but one went away. The white light above you shined as Coriolanus tried to catch his breath.

He slowly stepped forward, and you immediately followed his lead. Soon, you were standing in front of each other. Chest to chest. So intimate. So perfect.

He slowly reached for your hand, placing it onto his as he soaked up the feeling of your soft skin against his.

He slid his other hand around your waist, bringing you closer to him as you placed your other hand on his shoulder. For a moment, everything stood still. For a moment, the only thing that Coriolanus could hear was his breathing and the beating of his heart.

Coriolanus and you leaned your foreheads against each other, noses brushing. Coriolanus closed his eyes. He never wanted this to end. Then you started to dance.

You were moving with such grace as he spinned you around. His hand in yours as you slided around the dance floor.

"Coryo," your soft voice that whispered in his ear broke the peaceful silence, and his eyes snapped to yours. His eyes. His ocean blue eyes that were always so cold now looked at you with so much gentleness and pure adoration.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Anything, my love." Coriolanus answered without any hesitation.

"Does it make you feel sad that the love that you're looking for was the love that you had?"

Coriolanus was speechless. The look in your eyes caused the lump in his throat to be stuck there forevermore. He didn't say anything. He didn't protest to your claim. How could he? You were right. On the day of his wedding, he wished to marry you, not Livia. He never found in Livia what he did in you, and he, let's be honest, never will.

Suddenly, before he could stop you, you moved away from him, letting go of his hand and shoulder.

But now that we're done and it's over

I bet it's hard to believe

But it turned out I'm harder to forget than I was to leave

And, yeah, I bet you think about me

You lifted the front of your dress a little bit so you could walk without tripping over. You gazed over your shoulder at Coriolanus before you continued to walk away.

Once you were far away from him, you turned around, quickly causing your hair to fall down your shoulders as you leaned towards him.

All of a sudden, your dress turned red, and as you took a hold of your guitar that he knew all too well (hihi, get it?) the white roses on your dress were painted red.

The white curtain behind you fell, revealing the red light and the Covey as you played your guitar, softly swaying to the music you made.

"I hope you get what you deserve, Coriolanus Snow," you spoke softly, meeting his eyes once more. "But I don't need to worry. You will get what you deserve one day."

With a soft smile, you started to sing.

I bet you think about me when you're out

At your cool indie music concerts every week

I bet you think about me in your house

With your organic shoes and your million-dollar couch

I bet you think about me when you say

"Oh my God, she's insane, she wrote a song about me"

I bet you think about me 🌹

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